



.v^ta 



DIXMUDE 



SOLDIERS' TALES OF THE 
GREAT WAR 

Each Volume cr. 8vo, Cloth. 

I. WITH MY REGIMENT. By " PLA- 
TOON Commander." 
II. DIXMUDE. The Epic of the French 
Marines. Oct. - Nov. 19 14. By 
Charles le Goffic. Illustrated 

III. IN THE FIELD (1914-15). The 

Impressions of an Officer of Light 
Cavalry. & 

IV. PRISONER OF WAR. By Andre 

Warnod. Illustrated 

V. UNCENSORED LETTERS. Notes 
of a French Army Doctor. 

Illustrated 
Other volumes to follow. 

Philadelphia : 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 

London: WILLIAM HEINEMANN 




Phot. Excelsior 

FRENCH MARINES MARCHING OUT OF THEIR DEP6T AT THE 
GRAND PALAIS, PARIS 



DIXMUDE 

THE EPIC OF THE FRENCH 
MARINES 

(OCTOBER 17— NOVEMBER 10, 1914) 



BY 

CHARLES LE GOFFIC 

N 
TRANSLATED BY FLORENCE SIMMONDS 

_ With Maps and Illustrations 



Philadelphia : J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 

London: WILLIAM HEINEMANN 

MCMXVI 



■:,' 






Printed in Great Britain. 



INTRODUCTION 

PRAISE, they say, is stricken dumb 
by the greatest names, and also, 
we may add, by the greatest deeds. 
It is only by the bare simplicity of faithful 
narrative that we can hope not to belittle 
these. 

But yesterday the public had no knowledge 
of the great, heroic things accomplished by 
the Brigade of Marines {Fusiliers Matins). 
They were hidden under a confused mass of 
notes, communiques, instructions and plans of 
operations, private letters, and newspaper 
articles. It has been no easy task to bring 
them to light — the discreet light permitted 
by the censorship. Everything seems simple 
and obvious to those who can look at facts in 
their logical order and regular sequence. The 
historian who has to handle new matter knows 
what a labour it is to introduce, or rather to 
re-establish, such order and sequence. History 



vi DIXMUDE 

has to be written before the philosophy of 
history can be evolved.* 

Our readers must not be surprised, therefore, 
to find here only such considerations as are in 
direct relation to events. We have been 
concerned with facts rather than with ideas. 
And in the result nothing will be lost hereby, 
for we provide materials ready for use in the 
establishment of that war mysticism which 
the sombre genius of Joseph de Maistre 
presaged, which Vigny showed at work in 
certain souls, and which is marked out as our 
national religion of to-morrow. It is obvious 
that such an immense effort, such prolonged 
tension, such whole-hearted sacrifice, as were 
demanded from the handful of men with whom 
we are concerned, could not have been ob- 
tained by ordinary methods. A special com- 
pact was required, a peculiar state of grace ; 
the miracle was only possible as the outcome 
of a close communion, and, to use the proper 

* We may perhaps be allowed to note that Dixmuae 
appeared in the Revue des Deux Mondes, March I and 15, 
before any other study on the subject. 



INTRODUCTION vii 

word, of a true spiritual fraternity between 
men and officers. 

True, this fraternity has been manifested in 
every branch of the service and on every 
battlefield during the course of the present 
struggle ; but nowhere perhaps has it been so 
absolute as among the Marines. They had, 
no doubt, been well prepared. The sea is a 
perpetual battlefield, and a trench is hardly 
more of a prison than a ship. Community of 
danger soon creates community of hearts ; 
how otherwise can we account for the fact 
that the most turbulent and individualist of 
men become the most perfectly disciplined 
on board ship ? This is the case with the 
Bretons. At Dixmude under the command of 
their own officers, retaining not only the 
costume, but the soul and the language of 
their profession, they were still sailors. 
Grouped with them were seamen from all our 
naval stations, Bayonne, Toulon, Dunkirk, etc., 
and the battalion of Commander de Sainte- 
Marie, formed at Cherbourg, even contained 
a fair sprinkling of natives of Les Batignolles. 



viii DIXMUDE 

I had opportunities of talking to several of 
these " Parigots," and I should not advise 
anyone to speak slightingly of their officers 
before them, though, indeed, so few of these 
have survived that nine times out of ten 
the quip could be aimed only at a ghost. 
The deepest and tenderest words I heard 
uttered concerning Naval Lieutenant Martin 
des Pallieres were spoken by a Marine of the 
Rue des Martyrs, Georges Delaballe, who was 
one of his gunners in front of the cemetery 
the night when his machine-guns were jammed, 
and five hundred Germans, led by a major 
wearing the Red Cross armlet, threw them- 
selves suddenly into our trenches. 

" But why did you love him so ? " I asked. 

" I don't know. . . . We loved him because 
he was brave, and was always saying things 
that made us laugh, . . . but above all 
because he loved us." 

Here we have the secret of this extraordinary 
empire of the officers over their men, the 
explanation of that miracle of a four weeks' 
resistance, one against six, under the most 



INTRODUCTION ix 

formidable tempest of shells of every calibre 
that ever fell upon a position, in a shattered 
town where all the buildings were ablaze, and 
where, to quote the words of a Daily Telegraph 
correspondent, it was no longer light or dark, 
" but only red." When the Boches murdered 
Commander Jeanniot, his men were half 
crazy. They would not have felt the death 
of a father more deeply. I have recently had 
a letter sent me written by a Breton lad, 
Jules Cavan, who was wounded at Dixmude. 
While he was in hospital at Bordeaux he 
was visited by relatives of Second-Lieutenant 
Gautier, who was killed on October 27 in the 
cemetery trenches. 

"Dear Sir," he wrote to M. Dalche de 
Desplanels the following day, " you cannot 
imagine how your visit went to my heart. . . . 
On October 19, when my battalion took the 
offensive at Lannes, three kilometres from 
Dixmude, I was wounded by a bullet in the 
thigh. I dragged myself along as best I could 
on the battlefield, bullets falling thickly all 
around me. I got over about five hundred 



x DIXMUDE 

metres on the battlefield and reached the road. 
Just at that moment Lieutenant Gautier, 
who was coming towards me with a section, 
seeing me in the ditch, asked : ' Well, my 
lad, what is the matter with you I ' ' Oh, 
Lieutenant, I am wounded in the leg, and I 
cannot drag myself further.' ' Here then, 
get on my back.' And he carried me to a 
house at Lannes, and said these words, which 
I shall never forget : c Stay there, my lad, 
till they come and fetch you. I will let the 
motor ambulance men know.' Then he went 
off under the fire. Oh, the splendid fellow! " 
" The splendid fellow ! " Jules Cavan echoes 
Georges Delaballe, the Breton, the " Parigot." 
There is the same heartfelt ring in the words 
of each. And sometimes, as I muse over these 
heroic shades, I ask myself which were the 
more admirable, officers or men. When Second- 
Lieutenant Gautier received orders to take 
the place of Lieutenant de Pallieres, buried 
by a shell in the trench of the cemetery where 
Lieutenant Eno had already fallen, he read his 
fate plainly ; he said : " It's my turn." And 



INTRODUCTION xi 

he smiled at Death, who beckoned him. But 
I know of one case when, as Death seemed 
about to pass them by, the Marines provoked 
it ; when, after they had used up all their 
cartridges and were surrounded in a barn, 
twelve survivors only remaining with their 
captain, the latter, filled with pity for them, 
and recognising the futility of further re- 
sistance, said to his men : " My poor fellows, 
you have done your duty. There is nothing 
for it but to surrender." Then, disobedient 
to their captain for the first time, they 
answered : " No ! " To my mind nothing 
could show more clearly the degree of sublime 
exaltation and complete self-forgetfulness to 
which our officers had raised the moral of their 
men. Such were the pupils these masters in 
heroism had formed, that often their own 
pupils surpassed them. There was at the 
Trouville Hospital a young Breton sailor 
called Michel Folgoas. His wound was one 
of the most frightful imaginable : the whole 
of his side was shaved off by a shell which 
killed one of his comrades in the trenches, 



xii DIXMUDE 

who was standing next to him, on November 2. 
" I," he remarks in a letter, " was completely- 
stunned at first. When I came to myself I 
walked three hundred metres before I noticed 
that I was wounded, and this was only when 
my comrades called out : ' Mon Dieu, they 
have carried away half your side.' " It was 
true. But does he groan and lament over it ? 
He makes a joke of it : " The Boches were so 
hungry that they took a beef-steak out of 
my side, but this won't matter, as they have 
left me a little." 

Multiply this Michel Folgoas by 6,000, and 
you will have the brigade. This inferno of 
Dixmude was an inferno where everyone 
made the best of things. And the battues 
of rabbits, the coursing of the red German 
hares which were running in front of the army 
of invasion, the bull-fights in which our 
Mokos impaled some pacific Flemish bull 
abandoned by its owners ; more dubious 
escapades, sternly repressed, in the under- 
ground premises of the Dixmude drink-shops ; 
a story of two Bretons who went off on a 



INTRODUCTION xiii 

foraging expedition and were seen coming 
back along the canal in broad daylight 
towing a great cask of strong beer which they 
had unearthed Heaven knows where at a 
time when the whole brigade, officers as well 
as men, had nothing to drink but the brackish 
water of the Yser — these, and a hundred other 
tales of the same kind, which will some day 
delight village audiences gathered round festal 
evening fires, bear witness that Jean Gouin 
(or Le Gwenn, John the White, as the sailors 
call themselves familiarly*), did not lose his 
bearings even in his worst vicissitudes. 

Dixmude was an epic then, or, as M. Victor 
Giraud proposes, a French geste, but a 
geste in which the heroism is entirely 
without solemnity or deliberation, where the 
nature of the seaman asserts itself at every 

* " When we passed through the streets of Ghent they 
were full of people shouting, ' Long live the French ! ' I 
heard one person in the crowd call out, * Long live Jean 
Gouin ! ' He must have known them well." (Letter of 
Fusilier F., of the island of Sein.) Le Gwenn, which has 
been corrupted into Gouin, is a very common name in 
Brittany. [Compare the current English nickname "Jack 
Tar."— Tr.] 



xiv DIXMUDE 

turn, where there are thunder, lightning, rain, 
mud, cold, bullets, shrapnel, high explosive 
shells, and all the youthful gaiety of the 
French race. 

And this epic did not come to an end at 
Dixmude. The brigade did not ground arms 
after November 10. The gaps in its ranks 
being filled from the depots, it was kept up 
to the strength of two regiments, and reaped 
fresh laurels. At Ypres and Saint Georges it 
charged the troops of Prince Ruprecht of 
Bavaria and the Duke of Wurtemberg in 
succession. Dixmude was but one panel of 
the triptych : on the broken apex of the black 
capital of the Communiers, on the livid 
backgrounds of the flat country about Nieu- 
port, twice again did the brigade inscribe its 
stormy silhouette. 

But at Ypres and Saint Georges the sailors 
had the bulk of the Anglo-French forces 
behind them ; at Dixmude up to November 4 
they knew that their enterprise was a forlorn 
hope. And in their hands they held the fate 
of the two Flanders. One of the heroes of 



INTRODUCTION xv 

Dixmude, Naval Lieutenant Georges Hebert, 
said that the Fusiliers had gained more than a 
naval battle there. My only objection to 
this statement is its modesty. Dixmude was 
our Thermopylae in the north, as the Grand- 
Couronne, near Nancy, was our Thermopylae 
in the east ; the Fusiliers were the first and 
the most solid element of the long triumphant 
defensive which will one day be known as 
the victory of the Yser, a victory less decisive 
and perhaps less brilliant than that of the 
Marne, but not less momentous in its conse- 
quences. 

The Generalissimo is credited with a dictum 
which he may himself have uttered with a 
certain astonishment : 

" You are my best infantrymen," said he 
to the Fusiliers. 

We will close with these simple, soldierly 
words, more eloquent than the most brilliant 
harangues. The brigade will reckon them 
among their proudest trophies to all time. 



NOTE 

THE sources drawn upon in the follow- 
ing narrative are of various kinds : 
official communiques, French and 
foreign reports, etc. But the majority of our 
information was derived from private letters, 
collected by M. de Thezac, the modest and 
zealous founder of the Abris du Marin (Sea- 
men's Shelters), from note-books kindly lent 
by their owners, and from oral inquiries ad- 
dressed to the survivors of Melle and Dix- 
mude. Whenever possible, we have let our 
correspondents speak for themselves. We 
regret that the strictest orders have compelled 
us to preserve their anonymity, which, how- 
ever, we hope may be merely temporary. 



CONTENTS 





Introduction 


i 


— XV 


I. 


Towards Ghent 




I 


II. 


The Battle of Melle 




II 


III. 


Retreat . . ... 




2 9 


IV. 


On the Yser .... 




35 


V. 


Dixmude 




42 


VI. 


The Capture of Beerst . 




52 


VII. 


The First Effects of the Bombard- 






ment ..... 




70 


VIII. 


The Inundation 




94 


IX. 


The Murder of Commander 






Jeanniot .... 




99 


X. 


In the Trenches 




117 


XL 


The Attack on the Chateau 


DE 






Woumen .... 




133 


XII. 


The Death of Dixmude . 




142 



36 

42 

54 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACING PAGE 

French Marines marching out of their 
D^pot .... Frontispiece 

The Flag of the Brigade .... 4 

La Grand' Place, Dixmude 

The Papagaei Inn 

The Beguinage at Dixmude 

The Bridge and Flour Factory 

Belgian Armoured Car reconnoitring . 60 

The Parish Church after the First Days 

of the Bombardment j6 

The Town-hall and Belfry after the 

First Days of the Bombardment . 92 

The " Kiekenstraat " (Chicken Street) 
after the flrst days of the bombard- 
MENT ....... I40 

Old Houses on the Handzaeme Canal . 150 
The Inundation. Old Mill and Farms on 

the Yser 162 

Plan of Attack on Dixmude on November 

10, 1914 page 165 

Map of Operations round Dixmude 

At end of volume 



I. TOWARDS GHENT 

ON the morning of October 8 two 
troop trains passed each other in 
the station of Thourout. One con- 
tained Belgian Carabiniers ; the other, French 
Marines. They exchanged greetings from their 
respective lines. The Carabiniers waved their 
little yellow-bound caps and cried : " Long 
live France ! " The sailors replied by hurrahs 
in honour of Belgium. 

" Where are you going ? " asked a Belgian 
officer. 

" To Antwerp. And you ? " 

"To France." 
§^He explained that the Carabiniers were 
recruits from La Campine, who were being 
sent to our lines to finish their training. 

" You'll soon get them into shape, won't 
you ? " said a sailor to the officer. And 
shaking his fist at the horizon, he added : 

" Don't you worry, Lieutenant ! We shall 
get at the scum some day, never fear." 



2 DIXMUDE 

The Belgian officer who describes the scene, 
M. Edouard de Kayser,* had left Antwerp 
during the night. He did not know that the 
defence was at its last gasp, and that the 
evacuation had begun. Our sailors were no 
better informed. Rear-Admiral Ronarc'h, who 
was in command, thought that he was taking 
his brigade to Dunkirk ; he had been given 
a week to form it and organise it on the footing 
of two regiments (six battalions and a machine- 
gun company). Everything had to be evolved : 
the complement of officers, the men, the 
auxiliary services. This arduous task was 
complicated by the lack of cohesion among 
the elements of the brigade and perpetual 
changes of quarters (Creil, Stains, Pierrefitte, 
etc.). But the idea of forming infantry 
brigades with sailors was an after-thought. 
Article n of the Law of August 8, 1913, 

* Revue Hebdomadaire of January 9, 191 5. These were 
the same recruits which the last trains of Marines passed 
in Dunkirk station. " October 8, 4 p.m. Arrived at 
Dunkirk. Passed the Belgian class 19 14. Many cries of 
' Long live France ! ' " (Second-Lieutenant Gautier's pocket- 
book. See also p. 5, n.). 



TOWARDS GHENT 3 

certainly permitted any surplus men in the 
navy to be used for service in the field, but 
the manner in which these contingents were 
to be employed had never been clearly defined. 
Would they be linked to existing bodies, or 
would they be formed into separate units ? 
The latter alternative, by far the most 
reasonable, which effected a gradual transition, 
and, while connecting the naval combatant 
with the land forces, preserved his somewhat 
jealous but very stimulating esprit de corps, 
was by no means unanimously approved. 
The Minister overruled objections, and he 
was well advised. The glorious lessons of 
1870, of Le Bourget and Le Mans, had taught 
him what to expect from the co-operation of 
navy and army. Some preparation was of 
course necessary. Strictly speaking, a navy 
is made to navigate, and this explains a certain 
neglect of drill ; these men in new clothes, 
" capeles " (cloaked), as they say, in the new 
fashion, their caps bereft of pompons,* their 

* The pompons were restored after a time ; at first they 
were considered too conspicuous ; but regrettable mistakes 



4 DIXMUDE 

collarless tunics buttoned up to the throat, 
had been transformed into soldiers. Handy as 
sailors proverbially are, a certain stiffness of 
movement in the early days betrayed the in- 
experience of these sea-birds, whose wings 
had been clipped ; they were further ham- 
pered by heavy infantry overcoats. The 
brigade was sent almost immediately to the 
entrenched camp of Paris.* Scarcely had it 
settled into its quarters when its commander 
received orders to be ready to start for Dun- 
kirk, where a new army was being formed. 
Dunkirk was not yet threatened ; the brigade 
would be able to complete its organisation 
there. The order was dated October 4. 
On the morning of the 7th the brigade en- 
trained at Saint Denis and at Villetaneuse 
with its convoys. 

had been made, and in the distance the headgear of our 
men was too much like the German caps. 

* A certain number of the men were there already. "For 
weeks we bivouacked in the entrenched camp [of Paris], 
marching and countermarching to accustom the men to the 
novel weight of the knapsack. We spent the glorious days 
of the Marne as second line reserves and saw nothing." 
(Interview with Naval Lieutenant G. Hubert, by R. Kimley, 
Opinion, December 19, 19 14.) 




Phot. Excelsior 



THE FLAG OF THE BRIGADE 



TOWARDS GHENT 5 

" We are comfortably installed in cattle- 
trucks," notes Fusilier R. in his pocket-book. 
" At Creil we see houses that were burnt 
by the Germans. Night comes ; we try to 
sleep, but in vain. It is very cold. We shiver 
in our trucks." But over the dunes, along 
which the train had been running since it 
left Boulogne, a patch of purple light ap- 
peared ; then other fires twinkled, green and 
red, and the keen breath of the open sea 
made itself felt — Dunkirk. Here a surprise 
awaited the brigade : a change in the orders ; 
it was not to turn out, but the trains were to 
go on " towards Belgium, towards the enemy," 
to Antwerp, in short. 

The men stamped with joy. They hung 
over the doors of the trucks, waving their 
caps in greeting to Belgian territory.* The 
Admiral went off in the first train with his 

* " At every station the inhabitants were massed on the 
platforms. Loud cheers were raised, and our compartments 
were literally filled with fruit, sandwiches, cigars, cigarettes, 
etc. Beer, tea, and coffee flowed freely. You can picture 
the delight of our Marines, who imagined themselves in the 
Land of Promise." (Note-book of Dr. L. F.) 



6 DIXMUDE 

staff. On the afternoon of the 8th he found 
General Pau on the platform at Ghent. The 
great organiser of the connections between 
the Allied Armies had just left Antwerp, where 
he had been to plan out the retreat of the 
Belgian army with King Albert. He in- 
formed the Admiral that the railway had been 
cut above the town, and that the six divisions 
which were defending Antwerp had begun to 
fall back upon Bruges ; two divisions were 
echeloned to the west of the Terneusen Canal, 
and three to the east. Only one division was 
still in Antwerp, with 10,000 English troops.* 
The Belgian cavalry was covering the retreat 
on the Scheldt, to the south of Lokeren. 
There was no longer any question of entering 
Antwerp ; the contingent was to co-operate 
in the retreating movement with the English 

* A Royal Naval Brigade and 6,000 volunteers from the 
Naval Reserve. These forces had only been in Antwerp, 
where they were preceded by Mr. Winston Churchill, 
since October 4. They fought very gallantly during the 
last days of the siege and gave most valuable support to the 
Belgian troops. In the course of the retreat which they 
helped to secure, a portion of them only was pressed back 
into Dutch territory and there interned. 



TOWARDS GHENT 7 

reinforcements which were expected, and with 
the troops of the garrison at Ghent ; every- 
thing seemed to indicate that the enemy would 
try to gain ground in the west, and to invest 
the Belgian army, exhausted by two months 
of incessant fighting, and the forces from 
Antwerp that were supporting it at intervals 
along the Dutch frontier. But, to ensure the 
success of this enveloping manoeuvre, the 
Germans would first be obliged to take Ghent 
and Bruges, which they might so easily have 
done a month earlier ; they had deliberately 
neglected this precaution, feeling confident 
that they would be able to occupy them at 
their own time without firing a shot. 

By the end of August, indeed, General von 
Boehn's Army Corps had advanced to Melle, 
within a few miles of Ghent. Although no 
resistance had been offered, Melle had been 
partially burnt and pillaged ; the Germans had 
spared only the distillery where their troops 
were quartered, which belonged to a naturalised 
Bavarian. To save the town from effective 
occupation by the enemy, the Burgomaster, 



8 DIXMUDE 

M. Braun, had agreed with General von Boehn 
to undertake the victualling of the German 
troops stationed at Beleghem. The requisition 
was not a very harsh one for war time. But 
the foes were to meet again ; on August 25, 
the morrow of Charleroi, the Kaiser would 
have cashiered a general as duly convicted of 
imbecility who had ventured to suggest that 
in October France, supposing her to be still 
alive, would have had strength enough in her 
death-throes to detach units and send them 
to the help of Belgium. Be this as it may, it 
is certain that the Belgian army owed its 
salvation to this erroneous calculation, or 
foolish presumption. 

The effort the enemy had scorned to make 
in August against Ghent and West Flanders 
was now determined upon in October, after 
the fall of Antwerp. The conditions seemed 
to have changed but little. Ghent, an open 
town, spread over an alluvial plain at the 
confluence of the Scheldt and the Lys, which 
branch off here into innumerable canals, is 
open on every side to sudden assault. It has 



TOWARDS GHENT 9 

neither forts nor ramparts. We could only 
rely upon improvised defences to check the 
advance of the enemy. The garrison, under 
the command of General Clothen, was re- 
duced to eight squadrons of cavalry, a mixed 
brigade, a volunteer brigade, and two line 
regiments, none of them up to full strength. 
However, with our 6,000 rifles, they would 
suffice to deploy in the loop of the Scheldt, 
and on the space between the Scheldt and 
the Lys to the south of the town, which seemed 
to be specially threatened. If the English 
7th Division arrived in time on the following 
day, it would reinforce the front, which it 
would be unnecessary to extend further for 
the purposes of a purely temporary defence, 
designed to give the army in Antwerp an 
additional day or two. The fighting would 
probably be very severe ; neither General 
Pau, who was responsible for the plan, nor 
Admiral Ronarc'h, who was to direct the 
principal effort, had any illusions on this 
score. 
" Salute these gentlemen," said the General 



io DIXMUDE 

to|his Staff, pointing to the naval officers ; 
" you will not see them again." * 

The rest of the brigade followed hard upon 
the Admiral. The last trains arrived at 
Ghent during the night. The whole popu- 
lation was astir, cheering the sailors as they 
marched through the town to their respective 
barracks : the Leopold Barracks, the Circus, 
and the Theatre Flamand. The officers and 
the Admiral were lodged at the Hotel des 
Postes. f The reveille was sounded at 4.30 a.m. 
The men drank their coffee and set off for 
Melle, where the Belgians had prepared 
trenches for them. 

* Cf. Jean Claudius, " La Brigade Navale " (Petite 
Gironde of February i, 19 15.) 

f " I shared a room with the naval Lieutenant Martin 
des Pallieres, and before going to bed we refreshed ourselves 
by a general toilet, our last ablutions during our stay in 
Belgium, and the last of all for my poor companion, who 
was killed at Dixmude." (Note-book of Dr. L. F.) 



II. THE BATTLE OF MELLE 

THE little lace-making town, the 
younger sister of Mechlin and 
Bruges, had not suffered as much 
as we had feared. The rattle of the bobbins 
was no longer to be heard on the doorsteps ; 
certain houses showed the stigmata of pre- 
liminary martyrdom in their empty window- 
frames and blackened facades. But her heart 
beat still, and around her, in the great open con- 
servatory which forms the outskirts of Ghent, 
Autumn had gathered all her floral splendours. 
" We marched through fields of magnificent 
begonias, among which we are perhaps about 
to die," wrote Fusilier R. To die among 
flowers like a young girl seems a strange 
destiny for the conventional sailor — the typical 
sea-dog with a face tanned by sun and spray. 
But the majority of the recruits of the brigade 
bore little resemblance to the type. Their 
clear eyes looked out of faces but slightly 
sunburnt ; the famous " Marie-Louises " were 



12 DIXMUDE 

hardly younger.* Their swaying walk and 
a touch of femininity and coquetry in the 
precocious development of their muscular 
vigour explain the nickname given them by 
the heavy Teutons, to whom they were as 
disconcerting as an apparition of boyish 
Walkyries : the young ladies with the red 
pompons ! The Admiral, who had just recon- 
noitred the position, was conferring with his 
lieutenants on the spot ; a fraction of the 
2nd Regiment, under Commander Varney, 
was to take up a position between Gontrode 
and Quatrecht, leaving a battalion in reserve 
to the north of Melle ; a fraction of the 
1st Regiment, under Commander Delage 
was to advance between Heusden and Gouden- 
haut, and to leave a battalion in reserve at 
Destelbergen. He himself would keep with 
him as general reserve, at the cross-roads of 
Schelde, which was to be his post of command, 
the rest of the brigade, that is to say, two 
battalions and the machine-gun company. 

* Napoleon's young recruits of 1813, who called them- 
selves after the Empress. 



THE BATTLE OF MELLE 13 

The convoys, with the exception of the 
ambulances commanded by Staff-Surgeon 
Seguin, were to stay in the rear, at the gates 
of Ghent. This was an indispensable precau- 
tion in view of a rapid retreat, which, however, 
the Admiral had no intention of carrying out 
until he had sufficiently broken the shock of 
the enemy's onslaught. 

Thanks to our reinforcements, the Belgian 
troops were able to extend their front as much 
as was necessary by occupying Lemberge and 
Schellerode. The artillery of the 4th mixed 
Brigade, emplaced near Lendenhock, com- 
manded the approaches of the plain. No 
trace of the enemy^was|to^be seen. But the 
Belgian cyclist scouts had brought in word 
that the German vanguard had crossed the 
Dendre. We had only just time to occupy our 
trenches ; in the last resort, if it should be 
necessary to fall back on Melle, we should find 
a ready-made epaulement in the railway 
embankment near the station bridge. 

Antwerp was burning, and the civic 
authorities were parleying over its surrender ; 



14 DIXMUDE 

the English forces and the last Belgian division 
had fortunately been able to leave the town 
during the night ; they blew up the bridges 
behind them, and made for Saint Nicolas 
by forced marches, arriving there at dawn. 
They hoped to reach Eeclo by evening. But 
the enemy was hard in pursuit ; a party of 
German cavalry was sighted at Zele and 
near Wetteren, where they crossed the Scheldt 
on a bridge of boats. At the village of 
Basteloere they fell in with the Belgian out- 
posts, whose artillery stopped them for the 
time ; other forces, further to the north, 
advanced in the district of Wais as far as 
Loochristi, 10 kilometres from Ghent. Part 
of these came from Alost, the rest from 
Antwerp itself ; but the bulk of the German 
troops remained at Antwerp, to our great 
satisfaction. 

An enemy less arrogant or less bent on 
theatrical effect would undoubtedly have 
thrown his whole available forces on the 
rear of the retreat ; the Germans pre- 
ferred to make a sensational entry into 



THE BATTLE OF MELLE 15 

Antwerp, with fifes sounding and ensigns 
spread.* 

Simultaneously, the troops they had de- 
tached at Alost had their first encounter with 
the 2nd Regiment of the Brigade. They were 
expected, and a few well-directed volleys 
sufficed to check their ardour. To quote one 
of our Fusiliers, " they fell like ninepins " at 
each discharge. " There was plenty of 
whistling round our heads, too," writes another 
of the combatants, who expresses his regret 
at having been unable " to grease his bayonet 
in the bellies of the Germans." He had his 
chance later. The enemy returned in force, 
and Commander Varney thought it advisable 
to call up his reserve, which was at once 
replaced at Melle by a battalion of the general 
reserve. " There was," says Dr. Caradec, " a 
certain gun which was run up by the Germans 

* As a matter of fact, this triumphal entry, followed by a 
review of the investing army with massed bands, did not 
take place till the afternoon of the following Sunday. But 
the criticism holds good : only a portion of the German 
forces went in pursuit of the Belgian army after repairing 
the bridge across the Scheldt; 60,000 men remained in 
Antwerp. 



16 DIXMUDE 

about 800 metres from the trenches ; it had 
only just fired its fourth shot when we blew 
up its team and its gunners. They were not 
able to get it away till nightfall." Indeed, 
generally speaking, the enemy's fire, which 
was too long in range, did very little 
damage to us in the course of this battle ; 
the town did not suffer appreciably, and only 
three shells struck the church. Towards six 
o'clock the attack ceased. Night was falling ; 
a slight mist floated over the fields, and the 
enemy took advantage of it to solidify his 
position. Pretending to retire, he remained 
close at hand, occupying the woods, the 
houses, the hedges, the farmyards, and every 
obstacle on the ground. These were un- 
equivocal signs of a speedy resumption of the 
offensive. Commander Varney, whose con- 
tingents bore the brunt of the pressure, was 
not deceived and kept a sharp look-out. The 
men were forbidden to stir ; they were told 
that they must eat when they could. Besides, 
they had nothing for a meal. " It was not 
until midnight," says Fusilier R., " that I was 



THE BATTLE OF MELLE 17 

able to get a little bread ; I offered some of 
it to my Commander, who accepted it thank- 
fully." The mist lifted, but it was still 
very dark. Black night on every hand, save 
down by Quatrecht, where two torches were 
blazing, two farms that had been fired. The 
men listened, straining their ears. It was 
just a watch, on land instead of at sea. But 
nothing stirred till 9 o'clock. Then suddenly 
the veil was rent : shells with luminous fuses 
burst a few yards from the trenches ; the 
enemy had received artillery reinforcements ; 
our position was soon to become untenable. 
" We saw the Boches by the light of the shells 5 
creeping along the hedges and houses like 
rats. We fired into the mass, and brought 
them down in heaps, but they kept on ad- 
vancing. The Commander was unwilling for 
us to expose ourselves further ; he gave orders 
to abandon Gontrode and fall back a little 
further upon Melle, behind the railway bank."* 
We lost a few men in the retreat. But 

* Fusilier Y. M. J., Correspondence. See also the 
letter of the sailor P. L. Y,, of Audierne : "Then, 



1 8 DIXMUDE 

our position was excellent. About 60 metres 
from the trenches our machine-guns poured 
out hell-fire on the enemy, whom we had 
allowed to approach. A splendid charge by 
the Fusiliers completed his discomfiture. It 
was four in the morning. At 7 a.m. our patrols 
brought us word that Gontrode and Quatrecht 
were evacuated ; the Germans had not even 
stopped to pick up their wounded. 

The Fusiliers did this good office for them 
when they went to reoccupy Gontrode, taking 
the opportunity to collect a good number of 
German helmets.* Meanwhile the brigade had 
passed under the command of General Capper, 

seeing that they were advancing against us in mass (they 
were a regiment against our single company), we were 
obliged to fall back 400 metres, for we could no longer hold 
them. I saw the master-at-arms fall mortally wounded, 
and four men wounded when we got back to the railway 
line. There we stayed for a day and a night to keep the 
Boches employed, sending volleys into them when they 
came too near and charging them with the bayonet. It 
was fine to see them falling on the plain at every volley. 
We ceased firing on the 10th, about 4 a.m." 

* " This morning we made a fine collection of dead 
Germans from 50 to 100 metres from our trenches. We 
have a few prisoners." (Letter from Second-Lieutenant 
Gautier.) 



THE BATTLE OF MELLE 19 

of the 7th English Division, who had just 
arrived at Ghent, where his men received an 
ovation like that bestowed on our own sailors. 
Indeed, there is a strong likeness between 
them. The Englishmen in their dark dun- 
coloured uniform, with their clear eyes and 
rhythmic gait, are also of an ocean race, and 
do not forget it. They swung along, their 
rifles under their arms, or held by the barrel 
against their shoulders like oars, singing the 
popular air adopted by the whole British 
army : 

It *s a long, long way to Tipper ary. 

Apparently Ghent lies on the road to this 
goal, for the Tommies can never have been 
gayer. These fine troops, which advanced to 
the firing line as if they had been going to a 
Thames regatta, were the admiration not only 
of the citizens of Ghent, but of our own sailors, 
who felt an unexpected tenderness for them. 
Had not the hereditary foe become our 
staunchest ally ? " We look upon them as 
brothers," wrote a sailor of the Passage 
Lauriec to his family next day. 



20 DIXMUDE 

Reinforced by two of their battalions^and 
the Belgian troops of the sector, we were 
ordered to hold our former positions in the 
loop of the Scheldt. But towards noon, after 
a visit from a Taube, the enemy developed 
such a fierce attack upon Gontrode and 
Quatrecht that at the end of the day we had 
to repeat the manoeuvre of the preceding day 
and fall back upon the railway bank. Here 
at least the German offensive spent itself in 
vain upon the glacis of this natural redoubt, 
defended with conspicuous gallantry by Com- 
mander Varney's three battalions. The rest 
of the night was quiet ; the reliefs came into 
the trenches normally at dawn, and those who 
wished were free to go to church. It was a 
Sunday. " I have been to mass in a very 
pretty little church," wrote Seaman F., of the 
Isle of Sein. The day passed very well. 
In the evening after supper we went to bed. 
Scarcely had we lain down upon the straw 
when the order was given to turn out again. 

We were to beat a retreat, and it was time. 
The apparent inactivity of the enemy during 



THE BATTLE OF MELLE 21 

this day of the nth of October was explained 
by his desire to turn our position and surround 
us with all his forces in the loop of the Scheldt. 
On both banks of the river, down-stream and 
to the south, long grey lines were writhing. It 
was a question whether it would be wise to 
expose ourselves further, and to give the 
enemy a pretext for bombarding Ghent, an 
open town, which we had decided not to 
defend. Had we not achieved our main 
object, since our resistance of the previous days 
had given the Belgian army forty-eight hours' 
start ? Headquarters acknowledged that we 
had carried out our mission unfalteringly. 
From the moment when they first came into 
touch with the enemy the Naval Fusiliers 
had behaved with the firmness and endurance 
of tried troops, like "old growlers," as 
Fusilier R. said. Twice the German infantry 
had given way to their irresistible charge. 
This gave good hope for the future. 

Our own casualties had been inconsiderable. 
Ten of our men had been killed, among them 
Naval Lieutenant Le Douget, who had been 



22 DIXMUDE 

in the trenches, with his company, and who 
had been mortally wounded by a bullet as he 
was falling back on the railway embankment ; 
we had 39 wounded and one missing, whereas, 
according to the official communique, the 
enemy's losses were 200 killed and 5oprisoners.* 
Melle was not a great battle, but it was a 
victory, " our first victory," said the men 
proudly, the first canto of their Iliad. And 

* According to Le Temps of October 18, the German 
losses were very much greater : " 800 Germans killed." 
The hesitation and want of vigour shown in the attack 
seem surprising. They are perhaps to be explained by the 
following passage, written by Second-Lieutenant de Blois : 
u The Germans had not expected such a resistance, and even 
less had they thought to find us in front of them. They 
suspected a trap, and this paralysed their offensive, though 
our line was so thin that a vigorous onslaught could not 
have failed to break it. This they did not dare to make; 
several times they advanced to within a few metres of our 
trenches and then stopped short. We shot them down at 
our ease. Yet our positions were far from solid ; we were 
on the railway embankment, and the trenches consisted of a 
few holes dug between the rails ; the bridge had not even 
been barricaded by the Belgian engineers, and nothing 
would have been simpler than to have passed under it. 
When night came, Commander Conti ordered me to see 
to it. I turned on a little electric pocket light ; the 
bullets at once began to whistle about my ears; the 
Germans were only about 20 metres from the bridge, but 
they made no attempt to pass ! " 



THE BATTLE OF MELLE 23 

the troops which gained this victory were 
under fire for the first time. They came from 
the five ports, mainly from Brittany, which 
provides four-fifths of the combatants for 
naval warfare. And the majority of them, 
setting aside a few warrant-officers, were 
young apprentices taken from the depots 
before they had finished their training, but 
well stiffened by non-commissioned officers 
of the active list and the reserve. The 
officers themselves, with the exception of the 
commanders of the two regiments (Captains 
Delage and Varney), who ranked as colonels, 
and the battalion commanders (Captains 
Rabot, Marcotte de Sainte-Marie, and De 
Kerros, 1st Regiment ; Jeanniot, Pugliesi- 
Conti, and Mauros, 2nd Regiment), belonged 
for the most part to the Naval Reserve. It 
was, in fact, a singular army, composed almost 
entirely of recruits and veterans, callow youths 
and greybeards. There were even some novices 
of the Society of Jesus, Father de Blic and 
Father Poisson,* serving as sub-lieutenants, 

* The first killed and the second wounded at Dixmude. 
Both received the Legion of Honour. 



24 DIXMUDE 

and a former Radical deputy, Dr. Plouzane,* 
who acted as surgeon. The percentage of 
casualties was very high among the older 
men at the beginning of the campaign, and 
this has been made a reproach to them. If 
a great many officers fell, it was not due to 
bravado, still less to ignorance of the pro- 
fession of arms, as has been suggested f ; 
but leaders must preach by example, and 
there is only one way of teaching others to 
die bravely. We must not forget that their 
men were recruits, without homogeneity, with- 
out experience, almost without training. The 
moral of troops depends on that of their 
chiefs. " If you go about speaking to no 
one, sad and pensive," said Monluc, " even 
if all your men had the hearts of lions, you 
would turn them into sheep." This was 
certainly the opinion of the officers of the 
brigade, and notably of him who commanded 
the 2nd Regiment, Captain Varney, " always 



* He also received the Legion of Honour, 
t Cf. Dr. Caradec, " La Brigade des Fusiliers Mar ins de 
fYser" {Depecbe de Brest for January 19, 191 5). 



THE BATTLE OF MELLE 25 

in the breach," according to an eye-witness, 
" going on foot to the first lines and the 
outposts and even beyond them, as at Melle. 
Here," adds the narrator, " he was on an 
armoured car, but ... on the step, entirely 
without cover, to give confidence to his men." 
One of the officers of his regiment, Lieutenant 
Gouin,* wounded in the foot in the same 
encounter, refused to go to the ambulance 
until the enemy began to retreat ; Second- 
Lieutenant Gautier,t commanding a machine- 
gun section, allowed a German attack to 
advance to within 60 metres, " to teach the 
gunners not to squander their ammunition," 
and when wounded in the head, said : " What 
does it matter, since every one of my 502 
bullets found its billet ? " 

Moreover, the chief of these gallant fellows, 
Rear-Admiral Ronarc'h, had proved himself a 
strategist on other battle-fields ; the Minister's 
choice was due neither to complaisance nor to 
chance. 

* Killed at Dixmude. 
t Killed at Dixmude. 



26 DIXMUDE 

Admiral Ronarc'h is a Breton ; his guttural, 
sonorous name is almost a birth-certificate. 
And physically the man answers exactly to 
the image evoked by his name and race. His 
short, sturdy, broad-shouldered figure is 
crowned by a rugged, resolute head, the 
planes strongly marked, but refined, and even 
slightly ironical ; he has the true Celtic eyes, 
slightly veiled, which seem always to be 
looking at things afar off or within ; morally 
he is, as one of his officers says : " a furze-bush 
of the cliffs, one of those plants that flourish 
in rough winds and poor soil, that strike root 
among the crevices of granite rocks and can 
never be detached from them : Breton ob- 
stinacy in all its strength, but a calm, reflective 
obstinacy, very sober in its outward mani- 
festations, and concentrating all the resources 
of a mind very apt in turning the most un- 
promising elements to account upon its 
object." * It is rather remarkable that all 
the great leaders in this war are taciturn and 

* Dr. L. G., private correspondence. 



THE BATTLE OF MELLE 27 

thoughtful men ; never has the antithesis of 
deeds and words been more strongly marked. 
It has been noted elsewhere that Admiral 
Ronarc'h, though a very distinguished sailor,* 
seems destined to fight mainly as a soldier in 
war; as a naval lieutenant and adjutant- 
major to Commander de Marolles, he accom- 
panied the Seymour column sent to -the relief 
of the European Legations when the Boxers 
besieged them in Pekin. The column, which 
was too weak, though it was composed of 
sailors of the four European naval divisions 
stationed in Chinese waters, was obliged to 
fall back hurriedly towards the coast. It was 
almost a defeat, in the course of which the 
detachments of the Allied divisions lost a 
great many men and all the artillery they 
had landed. The French detachment was 
the only one which brought off its guns. The 
author of this fine strategic manoeuvre was 
rewarded by promotion to the command of a 

* He won his stars as commander of the Mediterranean 
Fleet, and has invented a mine-sweeper adopted by the 
British navy. 



28 DIXMUDE 

frigate ; he was then 37 years old. At the 
date of his promotion (March 23, 1902) he 
was the youngest officer of his rank. At 49, 
in spite of his grizzled moustache and " im- 
perial," he is the youngest of our admirals. 
He attained his present rank in June, 1914, 
and was almost immediately called upon to 
form the Marine Brigade. 



III. RETREAT 

HOW was the retirement to be carried 
out ? 
The operation seemed to be a 
very delicate one. The enemy was watching 
us on every side. General Capper's orders 
were to disengage ourselves by a night march 
to Aeltre, where the roads to Bruges and 
Thielt intersect. The retreat began very 
accurately and methodically, facilitated by the 
precautionary arrangements the Admiral had 
made : first, our convoys ; then, half an hour 
later, our troops, which were replaced tem- 
porarily in their positions by the English 
units. " As we passed through Ghent," writes 
Fusilier B., " we were heartily cheered 
again, the more so as some of us had taken 
Prussian helmets, which they showed to the 
crowd. The enthusiasm was indescribable. 
The ladies especially welcomed us warmly." 
Fair Belgium had given us her heart ; she did 
not withdraw it, even when we seemed to be 



30 DIXMUDE 

forsaking her. Covered by the English division 
which followed us after the space of two 
hours, we passed through Tronchiennes, Luch- 
teren, Meerendre, Hansbeke, and Bellem, a 
long stretch of eight leagues, by icy moonlight, 
with halts of ten minutes at each stage. The 
motor-cars of the brigade rolled along empty, 
all the officers, even the oldest of them, 
electing to march with their men. Aeltre was 
not reached till dawn. The brigade had not 
been molested in its retreat ; we lost nothing 
on the way, neither a straggler nor a cartridge. 
And all our dead, piously buried the night 
before by the chaplain of the 2nd Regiment, 
the Abbe Le Helloco, with the help of the cure 
and the Burgomaster, were sleeping in the 
little churchyard of Melle. 

After snatching a hasty meal and resting 
their legs for a while, the men started for 
Thielt. " Twenty-five kilometres on top of 
the forty we had done in the night," says a 
Fusilier, somewhat hyperbolically. " And 
they say sailors are not good walkers ! " * 

* This was one of the first questions General Pau put to 



RETREAT 31 

To avoid corns, they marched bare-footed, 
their boots slung over their shoulders. And 
they had to drag the machine-guns, for which 
there were no teams. But Aeltre, the kind- 
ness of its inhabitants, the good coffee served 
out, and laced by a generous municipal 
ration of rum, had revived them. " What 
good creatures they are ! " said a Fusilier. 
" They receive us as if we were their own 
children ! " 

The brigade reached Thielt between four 



the Admiral : " Are your men good walkers ? " He fore- 
saw that they might have to execute a very rapid retreat. 
Our officers felt some anxiety on this score. "When not 
in danger," says Dr. L. F. in his note-book, " the sailor 
gets rusty. At the beginning of October all of us, officers 
and men alike, had received the blue infantry overcoat, 
which was obligatory. The men shouldered knapsacks 
(not without grumbling), and we were transformed into 

troopers, nothing left of naval uniform but our caps 

This part of the foot-soldier assigned to them seems an 
inferior one to our men, and they accept it unwillingly, 
especially when it entails military marches with great-coats 
and haversacks. We had innumerable limpers and laggards 
on our marches in the environs of Paris. The contrast 
was very striking to those who saw our men afterwards in 
Belgium. It was a proof of the marvellous resilience of 
our race, and more particularly of our Bretons, who are 
always in the majority in the brigade." 



32 DIXMUDE 

and five in the afternoon ; the English division 
arrived at six, and we at once went into our 
temporary quarters ; the roads were barri- 
caded, and strong guards were placed at 
every issue. Fifty thousand Germans were 
galloping in pursuit of us. If they did not 
catch us at Thielt, we perhaps owed this to 
the Burgomaster of one of the places we had 
passed through, who sent them on a wrong 
track. His heroic falsehood cost him his life, 
and secured a good night's rest for our men. 
For the first time for three days they were 
able to sleep their fill on the straw of hospitable 
Belgian farms and make up for the fatigues 
of their previous vigils. A Taube paid an 
unwelcome visit in the morning, but was 
received with a vigorous fusillade, and the 
" beastly bird " was brought down almost 
immediately, falling in the English lines, to 
the great delight of our men. Shortly after- 
wards we broke up our camp and set out for 
Thourout, which we reached at I p.m. Here 
the English division had to leave us, to march 
upon Roulers, and the brigade came under 

I 



RETREAT 33 

the command of King Albert, whose outposts 
we had now reached. 

The Belgian army, after its admirable 
retreat from Antwerp, had merely touched at 
Bruges, and deciding not to defend Ostend, 
had fallen back by short marches towards the 
Yser. All its convoys had not yet arrived. 
To ensure their safety, it had decided, in 
spite of its exhausted state, to deploy in an 
undulating line extending from Menin to the 
marshes of Ghistelles ; the portion of this 
front assigned to the Fusiliers ran from the 
wood of Vijnendaele to the railway station 
of Cortemarck. On the 14th, in a downpour 
of rain, the brigade marched to the west of 
Pereboom, and took up a position facing 
east. It was the best position open to them, 
though, indeed, it was poor enough, by reason 
of its excentricity. The enemy, who had 
finally got on our track, was reported to be 
advancing in dense masses upon Cortemarck. 
The 6,000 men of the brigade, however heroic 
they might prove themselves, could not hope 
to offer a very long resistance to such over- 



34 DIXMUDE 

whelming forces on a position so difficult to 
maintain, a position without natural defences, 
without cover on any side, even towards the 
west, where the French troops had not yet 
completed their extension. It was the Ad- 
miral's duty to report to the Belgian Head- 
quarters Staff on these tactical defects ; the 
reply was an order to make a stand " at all 
costs," a term fully applicable to the situation ; 
but this was rescinded, and at midnight on 
October 15 the retreat was resumed. 

It ceased only on the banks of the Yser. 



IV. ON THE YSER 

OUR columns started at 4 a.m., while 
it was still quite dark, but the roads 
were good in spite of the rain which 
had been falling incessantly all night. 

The route was through Warken, Zarren, and 
Eessen, with Dixmude as its final point. The 
first battalion of the 2nd Regiment and the 
three Belgian batteries of the Pontus group 
brought up the rear. The advance was 
hampered by the usual congestion of the 
roads, refugees fleeing before the invaders, 
dragging bundles containing all their worldly 
goods. These miserable beings seemed to be 
moving along mechanically, their legs the 
only part of them that showed any vitality. 
They halted by the roadside, making way for 
us, staring at us dully, as if they had left their 
souls behind them with all the dear familiar 
things of their past lives. Our men called 
out to them as they passed : " Keep your 
hearts up. We'll come back." 



36 DIXMUDE 

They made no answer. It was still raining 
and the water was streaming off the great- 
coats. Near Eessen we left Commander de 
Kerros with the second battalion of the 1st 
Regiment, to hold the roads of Vladsloo, 
Clercken, and Roulers ; the third battalion of 
the 2nd Regiment, under Commander Mauros, 
pushed on in the direction of Woumen, to 
bar the way to Ypres. We had a fine front, 
though the Admiral thought it rather too 
wide for our strength. The four other 
battalions and the machine-gun company 
entered Dixmude about noon, and at once 
took up a position behind the Yser after 
detaching a strong outpost guard on the 
north, near the village of Beerst, on the 
Ostend road, by the side of which runs a 
little light railway for local transport. The 
Admiral, who had been anxiously looking out 
for some undulation in this desperately flat 
landscape where he could place his artillery, 
found a suitable spot at last to the south of 
the Chapel of Notre Dame de Bon Secours, 
half-way to Eessen. He chose the chapel itself 



ON THE YSER 37 

for his own headquarters. All these arrange- 
ments were made immediately, and the men 
had scarcely got into their quarters, when 
they were sent out with spades and picks, 
together with a company of the Belgian 
Engineers, to put the outskirts of the town 
into a state of defence. They had to be 
content with measures of the greatest urgency 
alone, for the enemy was pressing in upon us 
and creeping up to Dixmude. A few shrapnel 
shells had already fallen upon the town, the 
inhabitants of which began to decamp hastily. 
However, the railway was still intact, and we 
were expecting the last trains of material 
from Antwerp. " At all costs " — this is 
a phrase that recurs very often in orders 
from the Staff, and one which the brigade 
accepted unmurmuringly — the line was to be 
protected and the enemy held. Two, three, 
trains passed, and strange ones they were. 
They continued to run in until night ; the 
fires were covered up ; the engine-drivers 
never whistled ; all that was heard was 
the muffled pant of the engine, like a 



38 DIXMUDE 

great sigh rising from the devastated 
plains. 

That same evening our outposts on the 
Eessen road were attacked by an armoured car 
and 200 German cyclists ; they repulsed the 
attack ; but we were really too much exposed 
in our position. The Admiral decided that 
it was imprudent to maintain such a wide 
front with troops numerically so weak, but 
which it would take a long time to move off. 
At Dixmude, on the other hand, where the 
Yser begins to curve towards the coast, and 
forms a re-entrant confronting the enemy, there 
was a position which would permit of a con- 
centric fire from our artillery, particularly 
favourable to the defensive attitude we were 
to assume. The considerations which had 
forced us to extend our front had no longer 
any weight ; all the transports from Antwerp 
had got in in time. The safety of the Belgian 
army was assured ; its material had reached 
it, and, with the exception of certain units 
which had been made prisoners in the 
evacuation of Antwerp or had been driven 



ON THE YSER 39 

into Holland, and the divisions which con- 
tinued our line to the North Sea, it was in 
shelter behind the Yser, in touch with the 
English corps and the army of General d'Urbal. 
The brigade might therefore very properly 
concentrate its defensive round Dixmude. 

The Belgian command, which had passed 
into the hands of General Michel, readily 
accepted these arguments, and the operation 
was agreed upon for the next day. " The 
Boches were there twenty-four hours after us," 
says a sailor's letter. " We hoped they were 
eight kilometres from the town. We were all 
dead tired, but standing firm." The evacua- 
tion of these dangerous outposts on flat, open 
ground, where scattered farms, occasional 
stacks of straw, and the poplars along the 
roadside were the only available cover, was 
carried out with very trifling loss, and we at 
once organised our defences round Dixmude. 

" The Admiral has cast anchor here," wrote 
a warrant officer of Servel on October 18. "I 
don't expect we shall weigh it again just yet." 

The image was very appropriate. Dixmude, 



40 DIXMUDE 

especially when its eastern outskirts were 
under water, was not unlike a ship anchored 
fore and aft at the entrance of an inland sea. 
But this ship had neither armour plates, 
quarter-netting, nor portholes. The trenches 
that had been hastily dug round the town 
could not have been held against a strong 
infantry attack ; the first rush would have 
carried them. A whole system of defence had 
to be organised, and all had to be done in a 
few hours, actually under the enemy's fire. 
All honour to the Admiral for having attempted 
it, and for holding on to Dixmude as he would 
have done to his own ship ! No sooner had 
he recognised the importance of the position 
than he set to work to increase its defensive 
value ; he was not to be seduced by the 
feints of the enemy and the temptations 
offered to beguile him into deploying. Crouch- 
ing upon the Yser, his head towards the enemy, 
he only left his lines three times : to support a 
French cavalry attack upon Thourout, to 
draw back the enemy, who was concentrating 
in another direction, and was diverted by 



ON THE YSER 41 

fears for Woumen, and finally to co-operate in 
the recapture of Pervyse and Ramscappelle. 
But meanwhile, even when he thus detached 
units and sent them some distance from their 
base, he kept the whole or a part of his 
reserves at Dixmude ; he clung to his re- 
entrant — he kept his watch on the Yser. 



V. DIXMUDE 

ON October 16, 191 4, Dixmude (in 
Flemish Diksmuiden) numbered 
about 4,000 inhabitants. The 
Guides call it " a pretty little town," but it 
was scarcely more than a large village. " It 
is a kind of Pont-Labbe," wrote one of our 
sailors, but a Flemish Pont-Labbe, all bricks 
and tiles, dotted with cafes and nunneries, 
clean, mystical, sensuous, and charming, espe- 
cially when the rain ceased for a while, 
and the old houses, coloured bright green or 
yellow, smiled at the waters of the canal 
behind their screen of ancient limes, under a 
clear sky. From the four points of the 
horizon long lines of poplars advanced in 
procession to the fine church of Saint Nicolas, 
the pride of the place. The graceful fifteenth- 
century apse was justly praised ; but after 
having admired this, there were further 
beauties to enjoy in the interior, which con- 
tained a good Jouvenet, Jordaens' Adoration 







THE PAPEGAEI INN 

(From a picture by M. Leon Cassel) 



DIXMUDE 43 

of the Magi, a well-proportioned font, and one 
of the most magnificent rood-screens of West 
Flanders, the contemporary and rival of those 
of Folgoet and Saint-Etienne-du-Mont. 

This stately church, the exquisite Grand' 
Place of the Hotel de Ville, the " Roman " 
bridge of the canal of Handzaeme, the 
slender silhouette of the Residencia (the house 
of the Spanish Governors), and five or six 
other old-time dwellings, with crow-stepped or 
flexured gables, like the hostelry of Den 
Papagaei (The Parrot), which bore the date of 
its foundations in huge figures upon its bulging 
front, hardly sufficed to draw the cosmopolitan 
tourist tide towards Dixmude. Travellers 
neglected it ; historians ignored it. The 
capital of an essentially agricultural district, 
at the confluence of two industries, and astride, 
so to speak, upon the infinity of beetroot- 
fields and the infinity of meadows to which 
the Yser serves as the line of demarcation, 
Dixmude showed a certain animation only on 
market-days ; then it appeared as the metro- 
polis of the vast flat district, streaked with 



44 DIXMUDE 

canals and more aquatic than terrestrial, 
where innumerable flocks and herds pastured 
under the care of classic shepherds in loose 
grey coats. The salt marsh-mutton of Dix- 
mude and its butter, which was exported 
even to England, were famous. A peaceful 
population, somewhat slow and stolid, ruddy 
of complexion, husky and deliberate of speech, 
led lives made up of hard work, religious 
observance, and sturdy drinking bouts in the 
scattered farms about the town. The Flemish 
plains do not breed dreamers. When, like 
those of Dixmude, such plains are amphibious, 
half land, half water, they do not, as a rule, 
stimulate the fighting instinct ; their in- 
habitants are absorbed in domestic cares, 
battling unceasingly for a livelihood with two 
rival elements. 

Such were the only battles that they knew ; 
no invader had ever ventured among them. 
Invasion, indeed, seemed physically im- 
possible. The whole country between the 
hills of Cassel, Dixmude, and the line of 
sand-hills along the coast is but a vast scboore, 



DIXMUDE 45 

a huge polder snatched from the sea, and 
almost entirely below the sea-level, owing to 
the deposits of mud left high and dry on the 
shore. Down to the eleventh century it was 
still a bay into which the drakkars of the 
Norse pirates might venture. If Dixmude, 
like Penmarc'h and Pont-Labbe, had retained 
its maritime character, we might have found 
on the fronts of its riverside houses the rusty 
iron rings to which barques were once moored. 
To safeguard the tenure of this uncertain soil, 
slowly annexed by centuries of effort, con- 
quered, but not subdued, and always ready to 
revert to its former state, it was not enough 
to thrust back the sea, which would have over- 
flowed it twice a day at high tide ; it was 
further necessary to drain off the fresh water, 
which streams down into it from the west and 
the south, mainly from the stiff clay of the 
Dutch hills, floods the meadows, cuts through 
the roads, and invades the villages. The 
struggle is unintermittent. Such country, 
threatened on every side, is only habitable by 
virtue of incessant precautions and watchful- 



46 DIXMUDE 

ness. The sea is kept under control by 
Nieuport, with its formidable array of sluices, 
locks, chambers, water-gates, and cranks ; the 
fresh water, which oozes out on every hand, 
spangling the rough homespun of the glebe 
with diamond pools from the beginning of 
autumn to long after the end of winter, is 
dealt with by a methodical and untiring 
system of drainage directed, under State con- 
trol, by associations of farmers and landowners 
{gardes wateringues). Hence the innumerable 
cuttings (watergands) along the hedges, the 
thousands of drains that chequer the soil, 
the dykes, several metres high, which overhang 
the rivers — the Yser, the Yperlee, the Kemmel- 
beck, the Berteartaart, the Vliet, and twenty 
other unnamed streams of inoffensive aspect — 
which, when swelled by the autumn rains, 
become foaming torrents rushing out upon 
the ancient schoore of Dixmude. The roads 
have to be raised very high in this boundless 
marsh land, the depressed surface of which is 
broken only by sparse groups of trees and the 
roofs of low-lying farms. They are few in 



DIXMUDE 47 

number, only just sufficient to ensure com- 
munication, and they require constant repair. 
Torn up by shells and mined by the huge 
German explosives, the " saucepans " {mar- 
mites) and " big niggers " (gros noirs), as the 
sailors call them, our company of French and 
Belgian road-menders had to work day and 
night throughout the operations to keep them 
open. 

Other roads that meander across the plain 
are negligible. They are mere tracks, most 
of which are obliterated when the sub- 
terranean waters rise in the autumn. For in 
these regions the water is everywhere : in 
the air, on the earth, and under the earth, 
where it appears barely a metre beneath the 
surface as soon as the crust of soft clay that 
it raises in blisters is lifted. It rains three 
days out of four here. Even the north 
winds, which behead the meagre trees and 
lay them over in panic-stricken attitudes, bring 
with them heavy clouds of cold rain gathered 
in hyborean zones. And when the rain 
ceases, the mists rise from the ground, white 



48 DIXMUDE 

mists, almost solid, in which men and things 
take on a ghostly aspect. Sometimes indeed 
the schoore lights up between two showers, like 
a tearful face trying to smile, but such good 
moments are rare. This is the country of 
moisture, the kingdom of the waters, of 
fresh water, that bugbear of sailors. And it 
was here that fate called upon them to fight, 
to make their tremendous effort. For nearly 
four weeks, from October 16 to November 10 
(the date of the taking of Dixmude), they, 
with their Admiral, clung desperately to their 
raft of suffering at the entrance to the delta 
of marshes, watched over by ancient windmills 
with shattered wings. One against six, with- 
out socks and drawers, under incessant rain, 
and in mud more cruel than the enemy's 
shells, they accomplished their task, barring 
the road to Dunkirk, first ensuring the safety 
of the Belgian army and then enabling our 
own Armies of the North to concentrate 
behind the Yser and dissipate the shock of 
the enemy's attack. " At the beginning of 
October," says the Bulletin des Armees of 



DIXMUDE 49 

November 25, 1914, which sums up the 
situation very exactly, " the Belgian army 
quitted Antwerp too much exhausted to take 
part in any movement.* The English were 
leaving the Aisne for the north ; General 
Castelnau's army had not advanced beyond 
the south of Arras, and that of General 
Maudhuy was defending itself from the south 
of Arras to the south of Lille. Further off 
we had cavalry, Territorials, and Naval 
Fusiliers." For the moment at Dixmude, 
the most exposed point of all, we had only 
the Fusiliers and a few Belgian detachments, 
who were putting forth their remaining 
strength in a supreme effort to co-operate in 
the defence. 

The Admiral had said to them : " The task 
given to you is a solemn and a dangerous one. 
All your courage is needed. Sacrifice your- 
selves to save our left wing until reinforce- 



* In spite of this, four Belgian divisions held the road 
from Ypres to Ostend, between Dixmude and Middelkerke, 
unaided, till October 23, and then the line of the Yser 
from Dixmude to Nieuport. 



5 o DIXMUDE 

ments can come up. Try to hold out for 
at least four days" * 

At the end of a fortnight the reinforcements 
had not yet arrived, and the Fusiliers were 
still " holding out." These men had no 
illusions as to the fate awaiting them. They 
knew they were doomed, but they understood 
the grandeur of their sacrifice. " The post of 
honour was given to us sailors," wrote 
Fusilier P., of Audierne, on November 5 ; 
" we were to hold that corner at all costs 
and to die rather than surrender. And indeed 
we did stand firm, although we were only a 
handful of men against a force six times as 
large as ours, with artillery." They numbered 
exactly 6,000 sailors and 5,000 Belgians, under 
the command of Colonel (acting General) 
Meiser, against three German army corps. 
Their artillery was very insufficient, at least 
at the beginning. They had no heavy guns 
and no air-planes, f nothing to give them in- 

* Pierre Loti, Illustration for December 12, 19 14. 
t But this was not due to defective organisation. It 
must be remembered that the brigade was destined for 



DIXMUDE Si 

formation but the reports of the Belgian 
cvclists and the approximate estimates of 
the men in the trenches. 

" How many of you were there ? " asked a 
Prussian major who had been taken prisoner, 
speaking the day after the fall of Dixmude. 
" Forty thousand, at least ! " 

And when he heard that there had been 
only 6,000 sailors, he wept with rage, mutter- 
ing : 

" Ah ! if we had only known ! " 

Antwerp, and that unforeseen circumstances had caused 
it to become a detached corps, operating far from our 
bases. 



VI. THE CAPTURE OF BEERST 

SAVE Jot an unimportant suburb beyond 
the Handzaeme Canal, Dixmude lies 
entirely on the right bank of the Yser. 
Nevertheless, our general line of defence on 
October 16, both up and down stream, went 
beyond the line traced by the course of the 
river. From Saint-Jacques-Cappelle to the 
North Sea, by way of Beerst, Keyem, Leke, 
Saint-Pierre, etc., little rural settlements but 
yesterday unknown, drowsing in the gentle 
Flemish calm, the arc of the circle it described 
followed, almost throughout its course as 
far as Slype, the roadside light railway from 
Ypres to Ostend. The Fusiliers flanked this 
front from Saint- Jacques to the confluence of 
the Vliet. The 1st, 2nd, 4th, and 5th Belgian 
Divisions occupied the rest of the horse-shoe, 
but the effectives of these reduced divisions 
had not been made up ; some of the regiments 
had been reduced from 6,000 to 2,000 men ; 
whole companies had melted away. The 



THE CAPTURE OF BEERST 53 

remnants continued to stand their ground with 
fine courage. Until when ? They had been 
asked, like our Fusiliers, to hold out for four 
days, and it was not until October 23, at 
the end of nine days, that General Grossetti 
and his reinforcements arrived.* 

The Admiral had divided the defence of 
Dixmude into two sectors, cut by the road of 
Caeskerke ; the north sector was entrusted to 
the 1st Regiment, under Commander Delage, 
the south to the 2nd Regiment, under Com- 
mander Varney. His Command Post he es- 

* The Belgian detachments which co-operated with us 
in the defence of Dixmude showed themselves no whit 
inferior to those of the Lower and the Middle Yser, and if we 
were writing a general account of the operations, and not 
a chapter in the history of the Naval Brigade, the most 
elementary justice would require us to give these troops 
their due for the part they took in the defence. This 
was so admirable, that the Generalissimo commissioned 
General Foch to present General Meiser, whose brigade 
had specially distinguished itself at Dixmude, with the 
cravat of Commander of the Legion of Honour, while two 
of the colours of this brigade, the nth and the 1 2th, were 
decorated by the King and authorised to inscribe the 
glorious name of the town on their folds. The few 
hundred Senegalese who reinforced the Fusiliers towards 
the end also gave us very active and brilliant support, 
on which, for similar reasons, we have not insisted in our 
narrative. 



54 DIXMUDE 

tablished at Caeskerke station, at the junction 
of the lines of Furnes and Nieuport, keeping 
only a battalion of the 2nd Regiment at his 
own disposal. Of the two batteries of the 
Belgian group, one was sent to the south of 
the second level crossing of the Furnes railway, 
the other to the north of Caeskerke. A tele- 
phone line connected them with the great 
flour factory of Dixmude, at the head of 
the High Bridge. A platform of reinforced 
cement belonging to this factory provided us 
with an excellent observatory. The thickness 
of this mass of concrete, as costly as it was 
incongruous with the importance of the 
establishment, but very well adapted for 
heavy guns, which would command the whole 
valley of the Yser, did not fail to suggest 
certain reflections. This was perhaps one of 
the few instances in which ante-bellum pre- 
parations had turned against their authors. 
The machine-gun company was stationed at 
the intersection of the roads to Pervyse and 
Oudecappelle ; in the trenches of the Yser 
we had mainly Belgian troops ; finally, to 



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THE CAPTURE OF BEERST 55 

the south, debouching from the forest of 
Houthulst with four divisions of cavalry, 
General de Mitry threw out a bold advance 
post towards Clercken, and relieved us a little 
on that side, although he was unable to control 
the German offensive, which began in force 
at 4 p.m.* 

The enemy had begun in his customary 
manner by preparing the ground with his 
artillery, which from the hollow where it was 
posted, near Eessen, to the east of Dixmude, 
rained projectiles upon us from 10 and 15- 
centimetre guns. Scarcely had the last smoke 
clouds of the German batteries lifted, when the 
infantry advanced to the attack. The action 
was very hot, and was prolonged throughout 
the night and the morning of the 17th, with 
violent alternations of advance and retreat. 
The enemy, anxious to deal a decisive blow, 

* It was General de Mitry's corps which guarded the 
Yser towards Loo. With magnificent audacity, General 
d'Urbal had thrown it upon the forest of Houthulst before 
he had all his forces in hand. Here it was to dislodge the 
Germans, and then march upon Thourout and Roulers 
while Sir Henry Rawlinson marched upon Menin. 



56 DIXMUDE 

came on in compact masses, in which our 
machine-guns and rifle fire tore bloody 
breaches. These mobile bastions wavered for 
a few seconds, filled up the breaches, and then 
returned to the charge in the same close 
formation as before. No network of barbed 
wire protected the approach to our trenches ; 
most of them had neither roofs nor parapets. 
In these haphazard defences, successful 
resistance depended solely on the intrepidity 
of the men and the skill of the com- 
mander. Certain " elements " were taken, 
retaken, lost, and retaken again. But as a 
whole our line held ; the enemy failed to 
break through it. At dawn, discouraged, he 
suspended his attack, but, like a dog who 
makes off growling, he never ceased shelling 
us till II a.m. "After this," notes Fusilier 
B., " all noise ceased. Dixmude has not 
suffered much. The damage caused by the 
shells is insignificant." True, the enemy had 
not yet received his heavy artillery. 

We profited by the respite granted us to 
repair the trenches of the outskirts, which 



THE CAPTURE OF BEERST 57 

were somewhat damaged, and begin the 
organisation of the others. This work, indeed, 
was resumed whenever there was a lull, but 
it was carried on chiefly at night, and in the 
morning, from 5 to 9 o'clock, until the mists 
lifted. At this hour and the coming of light 
the German batteries generally awoke. We 
had not enough guns to reply efficaciously to 
the enemy. The brigade was therefore greatly 
rejoiced by the reinforcements it received 
during the day of the 17th : five batteries of 
the 3rd Regiment of Belgian Artillery (Colonel 
de Weeschouwer), which, added to the Pontus 
group, gave the defenders of Dixmude the 
respectable total of 72 guns. Unhappily 
their range was not very great, and the 
metal of which they were made was not strong 
enough to bear the strain of our 75 shells. 
Such as they were, however, our front was in 
much better case when they had been dis- 
tributed from Caeskerke to Saint- Jacques- 
Cappelle. The Admiral, who wished to direct 
their operations himself, had these batteries 
connected by telephone with his quarters ; a 



58 DIXMUDE 

battle is directed from a study-table nowa- 
days. Nevertheless, he gave a standing 
order that the batteries were to open fire 
instantly, whether by day or night, on the 
approaches to Dixmude, whenever rifle fire 
or the sound of machine-guns indicated 
that an infantry attack threatened our 
trenches. 

The check received on October 16 had 
perhaps made the enemy more cautious. He 
had allowed us breathing time in the after- 
noon of the 17th, and he gave us a quiet 
day on Sunday, the 18th. Only two or 
three cavalry patrols were reported near Dix- 
mude, and these were rapidly dispersed by 
a few salvoes. That day, too, our Fusiliers 
had a pleasant surprise. A tall, silent 
officer, with serious eyes, in a closely but- 
toned black dolman, came to visit the 
trenches of the Yser with the Admiral. 
His inspection seemed satisfactory to him. 
He pressed the Admiral's hand, and when he 
had regained the river bank, he paused a 
moment, gazing at the triangle of marshes, all 



THE CAPTURE OF BEERST 59 

that remained to him of his kingdom. It was 
Albert I.* 

Other news from the front arrived, and 
gave us confidence. In spite of the fall of 
Lille, our Armies of the North had taken the 
offensive with marked success from Roye to 
the Lys. Orders had come from the English 
headquarters to the 1st Corps to concentrate 
at Ypres, whence it was to attempt to advance 
towards Bruges.t This strategic movement 
had even been initiated, and the French 
cavalry which had just seized Clercken might 
be considered the advance guard of Sir Douglas 
Haig's corps. It asked the Admiral to support 
it in flank, to enable it to push on to Zarren 
and Thourout. He at once sent forward 
Commander de Kerros with a battalion of the 
1st Regiment and two Belgian armoured cars 
towards Eessen.t The road was free ; it was 

* " He's a model king : I saw him visiting the trenches ; 
he's a man, if you like." (Letter of a sailor, A. C, 
October 30.) 

t Cf. Sir John French's report. As is well known, this 
movement, which began on October 21, was stopped on 
the line Zonnebeke-Saint-Julien-Langermack-Bixschoote. 

X Commander de Kerros had made an offensive recon- 
naissance in this direction the day before. 



60 DIXMUDE 

strewn with the carcases of dead horses, and 
even with dead soldiers, as if there had been 
a precipitate retreat. The enemy seemed to 
have evaporated. But the church of Eessen, 
which he had turned into a stable, just as 
afterwards he turned the church of Vladsloo 
into a cesspool, with the immemorial Teuton 
taste for sacrilege, showed evidences of his 
recent passage. These tracks of the beast 
did not, however, tell us which way he had 
gone. Several roads lay open to him. It 
seemed most probable that, hearing of the 
movement of the French cavalry, he was 
retiring upon Bruges by way of Wercken or 
Vladsloo. Taking his chance, Commander de 
Kerros had installed himself to await the 
morning, while two Turco regiments,* which 
had been placed at the Admiral's disposal 
and ensured his liaison with the main body 
operating on Thourout, set out as foragers 
towards Bovekerke and the woods of Coucke- 
laere. Morning dawned, and the execution of 

* Under Colonel du Jonchay. Abd-el-Kader's grandson 
was with them. 



THE CAPTURE OF BEERST 61 

the French plan seemed about to be realised 
normally, when a terrible thrust by the 
enemy at a wholly unexpected point suddenly 
upset all calculations. 

In reality the Germans had not retreated 
at all, or rather they had only retired to 
come into touch again under more favourable 
conditions. Knowing the sort of reception 
that awaited them at Dixmude, they had 
decided to try another point on the front, in 
the hope that " the little Belgians " would be 
easier to deal with than the " young ladies 
with red pompons." About 9 o'clock on the 
morning of the 19th they threw themselves 
in three simultaneous leaps, at Leke, Keyem, 
and Beerst, upon the thin Belgian line, which 
staggered under the shock. The question was 
whether we should be able to reinforce it in 
time. If it were broken, the road would 
lie open to the Yser, the Yser would perhaps 
be seized, and Dixmude taken in the rear. 
The Admiral did not hesitate; the whole 
brigade should go if necessary. He sent 
forward two of his reserve battalions by forced 



62 DIXMUDE 

marches on the road to Ostend, another, under 
Commander Mauros, towards Vladsloo and 
Hoograde in flank. The artillery supported the 
movement, which began at 10 o'clock. But 
we did not know whether Keyem and Beerst 
were in the hands of the Belgians or of the 
Germans, and in this uncertainty we dared 
not open fire upon them. The two villages 
were wrapped in ominous silence. Com- 
mander Jeanniot and Commander Pugliesi- 
Conti, who were marching upon Keyem with 
the first and second battalions of the 2nd 
Regiment, made their arrangements accord- 
ingly. While the sixth company of the second 
battalion advanced towards Keyem, with 
Lieutenant Pertus, the fifth company, under 
Lieutenant de Maussion de Cande, received 
orders to make for Beerst. De Maussion put 
his company into line of sections in fours. On 
approaching the village he was received by a 
salvo of machine-guns. The Germans were 
entrenched in the houses and the church, 
whence they poured a withering fire upon 
our troops. The attack was made peculiarly 



THE CAPTURE OF BEERST 63 

difficult by the nature of the ground, which 
was completely flat, and afforded no cover 
save the irrigation ditches and a few leafless 
hedges ; the only possible method of advance 
was crawling. We lost a good many men in 
this deploying manoeuvre, so ill adapted to 
the impulsive nature of sailors ; every head 
that was raised became a target. De Maussion, 
who had stood up to inspect the enemy's 
position, was struck down. Every moment 
one of our men rolled over among the beet- 
roots. Would the charge never sound ? It 
would, but not yet. Pertus fell first, his 
leg shattered at the moment when he was 
carrying a group of farms close to Keyem ; 
Lieutenant Hebert was sent with the eighth 
company to support him. But the ditches 
on the road were already occupied by the 
men of the first battalion, and Hebert had to 
cut across fields to avoid this encumbered 
road. The fire directed against us had be- 
come very hot. It took us in flank, and we 
ran the risk of being wiped out before we had 
reached our objective. The Hebert company 



64 DIXMUDE 

accordingly swerved to the right, and marched 
to the edge of the woods and the houses 
situated between Beerst and Keyem, where 
the enemy's artillery and infantry seemed to 
be posted.* Hebert took up a position in a farm 
with the third section ; Second - Lieutenant 
de Blois and Boatswain Fossey with the first 
and second sections deployed to act as marks- 
men, facing the wood. Creeping from hedge 
to hedge and from watergand to watergand, 
supported by Lieutenant de Roncy's machine- 
guns, they arrived to within 500 metres of 
the enemy's position in connection with 
Commander Jeanniot, who had arrived at the 
same point on the left by a similar manoeuvre. 

" I think this is our moment," said the 
commander. 

" Forward I " cried De Blois to his men. 

Fossey gave the same order ; the two 
sections sprang out of their temporary trenches 
under a hail of bullets. Fossey was killed, 
De Blois severely wounded in the head and 

* The woods in question were the Praetbosch. 



THE CAPTURE OF BEERST 65 

leg.* The rest of the sections found their way 
to the farm where Hebert was making an 
attempt to check the enemy's counter-attack 
by fire from the loopholes that had been 
stopped up by the former occupants of the 
upper storeys, but which he had succeeded in 
opening. His exertions were cut short by 
an invisible battery, which broke down the 
walls, wounded his two lieutenants, and 
obliged him to fall back. He himself was 
wounded twice as he crept through the 
ditches.f Second-Lieutenant de Reau, who 

* Under the pseudonym of D'Avesnes, the Comte de 
Blois has published some notes of travel, various stories, and 
a naval novel, La Vocation, remarkable for their delicate 
sentiment and subtlety of analysis. It is bare justice to 
record here the gallantry of Quartermaster Echivant, who 
carried his wounded officer off to the rear under a heavy fire. 

t "We were able to get away by creeping through the 
ditches, but picked marksmen concealed in the trees deci- 
mated us. Suddenly my left arm began to hurt me 
horribly. A bullet had torn the muscles from elbow to 
wrist. A second bullet, aimed at my heart, went through 
a note-block and a war manual, and was stopped by my 
pocket-book. I fell. My men carried me off under fire. 
The last thing I remember seeing was a captive balloon 
which was hovering over the woods directing the fire of 
the enemy's battery." (R. Kimley, op. at.) M. Hebert 
is the famous inventor of the system of naval athletics 
which bears his name. 



66 DIXMUDE 

came out of cover to advance, had his shoulder 
shattered. The casualties in the Jeanniot 
battalion, whose sections continued the attack, 
leaving no of their number on the field, soon 
became so serious that they had to be brought 
back to the rear. It was then that the 
" Colonel " of the 2nd Regiment, rallying the 
remnants of the companies engaged, and con- 
tinuing to cover them towards Keyem, massed 
his forces, put himself at their head, and, after 
crawling up to within two hundred yards of 
the position, hurled himself upon Beerst. 
His example electrified his men. This time 
they would have allowed themselves to be cut 
to pieces sooner than give way. Some of 
them had thrown off their great-coats that 
they might move more freely. The old 
corsair blood was boiling in their veins. It 
was no longer a charge, but a boarding of the 
enemy's ships, and, as in the heroic days, the 
first who sprang upon the deck, pistols in 
hand and sword between teeth, was the chief. 
The whole crew rushed after the " Colonel " 
of the 2nd Regiment, who had become 



THE CAPTURE OF BEERST 67 

Commander Varney again. But as soon as 
one house was captured the next had to be 
taken by assault. Nevertheless, the attack 
progressed. To keep it in heart, the Admiral 
sent forward the second battalion of the 1st 
Regiment, under Commander Kerros, to sup- 
port it, and withdrew the sorely tried Jeanniot 
battalion to Dixmude. The Mauros battalion 
debouched simultaneously from Vladsloo, 
whence it had dislodged the enemy, with the 
help of the Belgian Brigade and their armoured 
cars ; the 5th Allied Division prolonged the 
fighting line to the right and in the rear. 
The effects of this successful tactical arrange- 
ment were at once felt : the enemy, who had 
brought his artillery into action, was groping 
about in search of the guns we had brought 
along to the north of Dixmude ; at 5 
o'clock in the afternoon we were in possession 
of Beerst. The bayonets were able to take a 
rest ; they had done yeoman's service ; in 
the streets and in the farmyards, the ground 
was paved with corpses. But night was 
falling. The Admiral, who had come up to 



F 2 



68 DIXMUDE 

the firing line, ordered Commander Varney 
to put the approaches to the village into a 
state of defence at once in view of a possible 
offensive return of the enemy. The men 
obeyed gaily ; they were still in the full flush 
of their costly victory.* They had scarcely 

* "Monday, October 19, bayonet attack on Beerst. 
Several officers killed and wounded." (Note-book of Second- 
Lieutenant X.) "We have been fighting for five days," 
wrote Second-Lieutenant Gautier on October 22. "The 
day before yesterday we resumed the offensive. It was a 
bit stiff. Don't be too much upset by the casualty lists. 
I should not have said anything about them, but as you 
will see them in the papers, I would rather tell you of them 
myself. Le Douget, who was in the training companies at 
Lorient, was killed at Ghent ; De Maussion was killed the 
day before yesterday ; Hebert, Pertus, and De Mons are 
wounded." In his note-book, under date of the 1 8th, 
Gautier adds the names of Second-Lieutenants de Blois and 
de Roussille as among the wounded. He gives some 
interesting details of the affair itself. A little incident 
reported by the Abbe Le H. bears witness to the heroism 
and self-sacrifice of the men. " It was at Beerst. A 
quartermaster had his leg broken by a bullet in the tem- 
porary trench he was occupying with his company. He 
went on fighting. His comrades were obliged to fall back 
under a tremendous fire. He refused to be carried away, 
and crawled into a ditch, where he killed three Germans 
who came creeping up to take him prisoner. Fortunately, 
a young Marine, who had been trained by him at Lorient, 
could not make up his mind to abandon the quartermaster. 
By dint of extraordinary efforts, he managed to reach him 
and succeeded in dragging him some three hundred yards to a 



THE CAPTURE OF BEERST 69 

begun to wield their picks, when a counter- 
order came from Belgian Headquarters : we 
were to fall back upon our former positions ! 
At 11 o'clock that night the brigade returned 
to its quarters at Caeskerke and Saint-Jacques- 
Cappelle. The horizon was aflame behind it : 
Hoograde, Beerst, and Vladsloo had been 
re-occupied by the enemy, who were " setting 
the red cock up " on the roofs (i.e., firing them). 

house, where he left him under shelter. As he left this house 
he himself was wounded in the arm by a^bullet. Night was 
falling. He came to the dressing-station to have his wound 
attended to. I was there. He told me his story with such 
infectious emotion that I proposed he should act as guide to 
two stretcher-bearers and myself for the purpose of bringing 
in the quartermaster. Without a moment's hesitation, he 
set out in front of us, heedless of the very real danger. 
After a difficult pilgrimage over open ground swept by the 
German machine-guns, we were lucky enough to find the 
quartermaster and to bring him back into our lines. I 
notified the conduct of these two brave fellows to the com- 
manding officer that same evening, and I hope they received 
the reward they deserved." 



VII. THE FIRST EFFECTS OF THE 
BOMBARDMENT 

THE Belgian Headquarters Staff had 
probably decided that its front on 
the Ostend road was too excentric, 
and that the line of the Yser would form a 
more solid epaulement. And in this case our 
diversion on Beerst was not quite useless, 
since it had secured the orderly retreat of the 
Belgian troops ; but, on the other hand, as a 
result of this diversion and of the reinforce- 
ment of the German troops, De Mitry had 
been unable to maintain himself at Thourout ; 
the Turcos had returned to Loo, and the rest 
of the French cavalry was obliged to follow 
the movement. The whole of the ground in 
front of Dixmude lay open to the enemy, who, 
reinforced by fresh contingents and the heavy 
artillery from Antwerp, released by the 
capitulation of the city, prepared in all 
security to renew the attack upon our positions 
in combination with a parallel action on the 



EFFECTS OF THE BOMBARDMENT 71 

lines of the Lower and Middle Yser. In order 
to understand clearly what follows, it will be 
necessary to remember that the defence of 
Dixmude and of the Yser, and, in the event 
of the forcing of the Yser, the defence of the 
railway from Caeskerke to Nieuport were 
closely connected, and that Pervyse and 
Ramscappelle lead to Furnes as well as 
Dixmude, Pollinchove, or Loo. 

A new disposition of the Allied forces was 
required under the new conditions. During 
the night of October 19 the Belgian Meiser 
Brigade passed under the Admiral's orders ; 
on the 20th at 11 o'clock the first " saucepan " 
fell upon Dixmude. " Up to this date," 
writes Captain X., " 77 shrapnel, with their 
queer caterwaulings, were the only presents the 
enemy had sent us. But during the course 
of the 20th the big shells began to rain upon 
us, and their first objective was, of course, 
the church. At the fifth or sixth the beautiful 
building was on fire." * And we had no 

* Cf. Dr. Caradec, op. cit.^ also the note-book and letters 
of Second-Lieutenant Gautier : " 1 1 o'clock, the church on 



72 DIXMUDE 

observer there. In preparation for the bom- 
bardment, we had worked all night at the 
trenches. Those nearest to the enemy had 
been provided with parapets and barbed 
wire entanglements, dug down to a depth of 
I metre 70 cm., and strongly roofed. But all 
the internal defences remained to be organised, 
notably the railway embankment, where the 
" big niggers " were falling in showers. One 
evening when his company was in reserve, 
after forty-eight hours in the trenches, 
Lieutenant A. was ordered to take up a 
position there. He had been on guard there 
three nights before ; he knew by experience 
how dangerous this spot was, and, less for 
his own sake than for the 250 men under his 
charge, he thought it his duty to speak out. 
" ' There are no trenches on the railway 

lire. . . . Sailors are queer creatures. Yesterday, while the 
church was being bombarded they exclaimed : * Oh, the 
brutes ! I wish I could get hold of one of them and break 
his jaw!' This morning we took a wounded prisoner. 
There was not a word of hatred, not an insult, as he passed. 
Two sailors were helping him along. He said : * Good- 
day. War is a terrible thing.' And our men answered. 
They are more French than they think." 



EFFECTS OF THE BOMBARDMENT 73 

slope, Commander,' he remarked to Cap- 
tain V. 

" < I know that.' 

" ' Oh, very well, sir.' 

" And smiling to encourage his men," added 
the eye-witness who reported this dialogue, 
" he went off to a post as exposed as a glacis." 

With such officers, Dixmude was better 
defended than if it had had a triple line of 
blockhouses. The men, who were worthy of 
their leaders, had soon grown used to the 
racket of the shells. The damage they do is 
not in proportion to the noise they make, 
" for one can see them coming, and they are 
heralded by a creaking sound, as of ungreased 
pulleys," * wrote a Marine to his family, 
adding ingenuously : " All the same, anyone 
who wants to hear guns has only to come 
here." Indeed, the noise was stupendous : 
420, 305, and 77 were thundering in unison. 
As we had no heavy artillery to reply, we had 

* " At first the big shells give one a very unpleasant sensa- 
tion, but one gets used to them, and learns to guess from 
the whistling noise they make where they are likely to fall." 
(Second-Lieutenant Gautier's note-book.) 



74 DIXMUDE 

to wait patiently for the inevitable attack 
which follows after the ground is cleared. 
Then the 72-m. guns of our six groups would 
be able to have their say. Unfortunately on 
our right the ravages caused in the Belgian 
trenches by the storm of German artillery had 
made it impossible for our allies to hold their 
position ; this being duly notified in time, 
the Admiral sent four of our companies to 
replace them. Scarcely were they installed, 
when the German attack began. Sure of them- 
selves and of victory, they had adopted the 
close formation of their first onslaught, with 
machine-guns in the rear, the veterans on 
the two wings, the conscripts in the centre 
and in front, the latter with rapt, ecstatic 
faces, the former swelling with the pride of 
former victories, all united by the same 
patriotic ideal, marching rhythmically, and 
singing hymns to the national God. The 
majority were young men, hardly more than 
boys. Later, in the trenches, when the 
Marines fell upon them, they knelt down, 
clasping their hands, weeping, and begging 



EFFECTS OF THE BOMBARDMENT 75 

for quarter. But here, in the excitement 
of the melee, elbow to elbow and sixteen 
ranks deep, they had but one colossal and 
ferocious soul. They were swinging along 
with a slightly undulating movement when 
the fire of our machine-guns struck them, 
true sons of those other barbarians who 
linked themselves together with chains, that 
they might form a solid block in death or in 
victory. An aroma of alcohol, ether, and 
murder preceded them, as it had been the 
breath of the blood-stained machine. Our 
men allowed them to approach within a 
hundred yards. To the shouts of Vorwdrts ! 
(" Forward ! ") from the enemy's ranks we 
answered abruptly by the orders " Indepen- 
dent fire ! Continuous fire ! " given by officers 
and petty officers. Behind their parapets, 
amidst the buzz of bullets and the bursting 
of shrapnel, the Marines did not miss a single 
shot. " We'll do for you ! " yelled the gunners, 
catching the contagious fever of battle. The 
Germans came on steadily, but the mass was 
no longer solid. The dislocated machine was 



76 DIXMUDE 

working with difficulty. It uttered its death- 
rattle at the foot of the trenches in the network 
of barbed wire where the survivors had rolled 
over. At 8 o'clock in the evening three blasts 
on a whistle, strident as a factory hooter, put 
an end to the work of the monstrous organism. 
The battle had been raging for six hours in 
the night. Once more we were the victors, 
but at what a price ! Dixmude, which the 
enemy's heavy artillery had battered in- 
cessantly during the attack, was not yet the 
" heap of pebbles and ashes," the line of 
blackened stones, it was presently to become, 
but its death agony had begun. Innumerable 
houses had been gutted. The entire quarter 
round the church was on fire. The rain, 
heavy as it was, could not extinguish the 
flames kindled by incendiary bombs. A 
projectile struck the belfry of Saint Nicolas 
at the hour of the Angelus ; the great bell, 
mortally wounded, uttered a kind of dying 
groan, the vibrations of which quivered long 
in space. " Poor Dixmude ! " cried a sailor ; 
" your passing bell is tolling." Happily, the 




(Newspaper Illustrations) 

THE PARISH CHURCH AFTER THE FIRST DAYS OF THE 
BOMBARDMENT 



EFFECTS OF THE BOMBARDMENT 77 

population was no longer on the spot. The 
Burgomaster had given the signal of exodus, 
and all had obeyed it, stricken to the heart, with 
the exception of the Carmelites and some dozen 
laggards and stubborn spirits, such as the old 
beadle described by M. T'Serstevens, who lived 
in a little gabled house with barred windows on 
the Grand' Place, and who, pipe in mouth, used 
to bring the keys of the church to visitors. 
He mumbled the rude Flemish dialect of the 
coast, and was tanned by the sea-wind. " The 
church, the house, the Place, the old man, 
were all in harmony : all embodied the unique 
soul of Mother Flanders," and all were 
destroyed at the same time ; the old man was 
unable to disengage himself from his house, of 
which he seemed but a more animated stone 
than the rest. 

In spite of the retreat of the enemy, the 
four companies of Marines had been left at 
their posts as a precautionary measure. An 
intermittent fusillade to the north of the 
Yser during the night suggested a renewed 
offensive. The only attack of any moment 



78 DIXMUDE 

took place at 3 o'clock in the morning, " but 
we repulsed it easily," notes the Marine R., 
" for in our covered trenches we are in- 
vulnerable." Disappointed, the enemy turned 
again towards the town, which he began to 
bombard once more at dawn. It chanced 
that the weather had cleared. The schoore 
smiled ; the larks were singing ; weary of 
lowing for their sheds, or already resigned to 
their forsaken condition, the cattle were 
ruminating in the sun * : and the interminable 
line of canals, the silvery surfaces of the 
watergands, shone softly on the brown velvet 
of the marsh. The sky, however, as says the 
Psalmist, armed itself with thunders and 
lightnings. The bombardment became par- 
ticularly violent in the afternoon. " At given 
moments the whole town seemed about to 
crumble," writes an officer. " The Germans 
had first attacked it with 10-centimetre guns, 
then with 15, and then with 21 -centimetre ; 

* " The cattle are running about on all the roads and 
in all the fields. No one attends to them." (Letter of the 
Marine E. T.) See also below, De Nanteuil. 



EFFECTS OF THE BOMBARDMENT 79 

but as this was no good, they determined to 
finish off these infernal sailors in grand style 
with their 305 and 420-mm." * Our reserves 
in Dixmude were of course sorely tried by 
this terrible fire, which it was difficult to locate 
and still more difficult to silence with defective 
guns. To add to the complexities of the situa- 
tion, we learned suddenly that at 4 o'clock 
the enemy had taken one of the trenches on 
the outskirts to the south of the town. 
Surprised by an attack in force, the Belgian 
section which occupied it gave way after a 
spirited resistance, involving the supporting 
section of Marines in their rear in their 
retreat. Only Lieutenant Cayrol remained 
at his post, revolver in hand, to enable his 
men to carry off the machine-guns. t Three 
companies at once crept along towards the 

* Cf. Dr. Caradec, op. cit. 

t The note which furnishes this information as to the 
heroic conduct of Lieutenant Cayrol adds : " Received a 
bullet in the middle of his forehead. Brought into the 
dressing-station by his men, where he gave an account of 
the incident and of the bravery of his men. He would not 
consent to be removed until he had been assured that his 
machine-guns were saved. Has come back to the front/' 



80 DIXMUDE 

captured trenches after our guns had cleared 
the approaches a little. 

" We tried our hands as marksmen," writes 
one of the actors in this scene, "and while the 
Boches were trying to re-form, before they 
had recovered from their surprise, we fired 
into them at 50 metres, and then charged 
them with the bayonet. You should have 
seen them run like hares, throwing away 
their arms and all their equipment. What a 
raid it was, five to six hundred dead and 
wounded and forty prisoners, among them 
three officers ! We reoccupied the trenches, 
and I spent the night in the company of a dead 
Belgian and a wounded German, who, when 
he woke up, exclaimed : 6 Long live France ! ' 
lest we should run him through. When day 
came, and we could behold our work . . . 
(Here an interval. A shell burst just over my 
head, smashed a rifle, and threw a handful of 
earth in my face. It was slightly unpleasant. 
I continue.) It was a pretty sight. All day 
long stretcher-bearers were picking up the 
dead and wounded, while we continued to 



EFFECTS OF THE BOMBARDMENT 81 

fire from time to time. All the wounded we 
have picked up are young men, sixteen to 
twenty years old, of the last levy. 

" The next night there was a repetition of 
these experiences, only this time it was the 
northern trenches that failed. As always, it 
was the sailors who had to recapture them. 
For lack of available forces, we were obliged 
to send two companies of the 2nd Regiment, 
which had been set aside to act as reliefs ; they 
put matters right by a little bayonet play." 

" You might have supposed that after this 
dance we had claims to a turn at the buffet," 
writes a second quartermaster. " Not a bit of 
it ! My company had been set aside for relief, 
and it carried out the relief. It would be 
untrue to say that we are not all a bit blown ; 
but we are holding out all the same. We 
called the roll ; there were some who did not 
answer to their names, and who will not see 
their mammies again. ... If only we could 
move about a bit to stretch our legs ! But 
we are packed together in the mud like 
sardines in their oil. In the morning the 



82 DIXMUDE 

hurly-burly began again, first a few shrapnel 
then from 12 to 1 a perfect whirlwind of 
shells of every imaginable calibre. How they 
lavish their munitions, the brutes ! " 

This defence of the Yser was, to quote the 
words of Dr. L., " an eternal Penelope's web." 
Scarcely had it been mended, when the fabric 
gave way at another point. Thanks to the 
reinforcements the enemy had received, his 
pressure became more violent every day. 
Reduced to impotence on the flank of the 
defence, where the vigorous attitude of our 
sailors deluded him into the belief that he 
had to deal with superior numbers, the foe 
pushed forward his centre. He succeeded in 
driving in a wedge on October 22,* occupying 

* Second-Lieutenant Gautier's note-book has the follow- 
ing under date of October 22 : " Cannonade still lively. 
One of our convoys blown to pieces." The incident took 
place the day before, and is evidently identical with that 
mentioned by Second-Lieutenant X. under date of 
October 21 : "Intensive shelling, a good deal of damage. 
De Mons and Demarquay, naval lieutenants, wounded. 
The church on fire. In the afternoon a German airship 
spotted an important convoy (provisions, ambulances, 
munitions, etc.) on the road from Caeskerke to Oudes- 
cappelle. The convoy was shelled." 



EFFECTS OF THE BOMBARDMENT 83 

Tervaete and gaining a footing " for the first 
time on the left bank of the Yser." * The 
1st Belgian Division, thrown back, but not 
broken, sent us word that it would attack 
next day, supported by our artillery. We were 
further to send them one or two of our reserve 
battalions. But the next day Dixmude and 
our outer trenches were so furiously bom- 
barded that we required our total strength to 
resist. The Germans were evidently using their 
biggest calibres, 21 and perhaps 28-cm. In 
spite of all this, their infantry could not get 
into our trenches. We had a few casualties, 
both killed and wounded, among the latter 
Commander Delage, " Colonel " of the 2nd 
Regiment, who, when his wound was dressed, 
would not stay in the ambulance, but resumed 

* Courrier de FArmee Beige. The pressure, says this 
official communique, was very strong, had been very strong 
ever since the 20th. On that day "a furious bombardment 
by guns of every calibre" had been kept up upon the 
Belgian lines. A farm situated in the front of the 2nd 
Division was taken by the Germans, retaken by the Bel- 
gians, and again lost." On the 21st a German attack upon 
Schoorbakke, combined with an attack upon Dixmude, 
failed signally. But the Belgians were becoming worn out. 

G 2 



84 DIXMUDE 

his command before he was cured. But 
things had not been going so well with our 
allies at Tervaete. Checked in a first attempt, 
a second and more vigorous counter-attack 
succeeded in driving the Germans into the 
river or upon the other bank ; but this, as the 
Courtier de VArmee Beige admitted, " was a 
transitory success, for the same evening 
German reinforcements renewed the attack, 
and carried Tervaete." Our artillery had 
done its best under the circumstances ; but, 
shouted down by the clamour of the big 
German guns, it was not able to keep up the 
conversation. " We still have nothing but 
the little Belgian guns," wrote Second- 
Lieutenant M. on the morning of the 22nd. 
" However, we are promised two batteries of 
short 155-mm. and two of long 120-mm. They 
arrived in the course of the evening. That's 
all right ! Now perhaps we shall be able to 
have a little talk with the Boches ! " 

But was it not already too late ? Dixmude 
was impregnable only so long as it was not 
taken in the rear; and the enemy, having 



EFFECTS OF THE BOMBARDMENT 85 

finally occupied the whole of the Tervaete 
loop, was gradually penetrating into the 
valley of the Yser. The last news was that 
he had arrived at Stuyvekenskerke. The 
42nd French Infantry Division, under General 
Grossetti, which was to replace the 2nd 
Belgian Division, now reduced to a fourth of 
its original strength, on the Yser, had not 
yet had time to come up into line. At Dix- 
mude itself the pressure was formidable ; 
shells were falling on us from every side, from 
Vladsloo, from Eessen, and from Clercken, 
whither the Germans had removed their 
heavy artillery. And at the same time the 
enemy's infantry attacked our trenches regu- 
larly at intervals of an hour, with the stubborn- 
ness of a ram butting at an obstacle, preceding 
every attack by a few big shells. It looked as 
if they were trying to divert our attention, to 
prevent us from noticing what was going on 
down below in the hollow of the Yser, where 
a grey surge seemed to be seething, and where 
the schoore appeared to be moving towards 
Oud Stuyvekenskerke. But the movement 



86 DIXMUDE 

had not escaped the Admiral, who was 
watching it from Caeskerke. Whence had 
these troops come — from Tervaete, from 
Stuyvekenskerke, or elsewhere ? We could 
not say, and it mattered little. At whatever 
point a breach had been made in the defences 
of the Middle Yser, the German tide had crept 
up to us : Dixmude was turned. 

In this, the most critical situation in which 
the brigade had yet been placed, the Admiral 
had only his reserves and a few Belgian con- 
tingents at his disposal. To bar the way to 
the bridges of Dixmude, Commander Rabot, 
with a battalion, hurried to the support of the 
left wing of the front. Commander Jeanniot, 
with another battalion, crept up towards 
Oud Stuyvekenskerke, to support the Belgians, 
having received orders to occupy the outskirts 
at least. The manoeuvre was a peculiarly 
difficult one to carry out, under a raking fire, 
and with men already dropping with fatigue 
and perishing with cold and drowsiness. 
But these men were sailors. 

" On October 24," writes the Marine F., of 



EFFECTS OF THE BOMBARDMENT 87 

the island of Sein, " we had spent a day and 
a night in the first line. That night we had 
two men killed in our trench and four wounded 
by a shell, and we were going to the rear 
for a little well-earned rest. Scarcely had we 
swallowed our coffee, when the order came to 
clear the decks, as we say on board ship, 
and shoulder our knapsacks. When we got 
nearer, the bullets began to whistle. We 
crawled on all fours over the exposed ground, 
without a shred of cover. Those who ven- 
tured to raise their heads were at once 
wounded, though we could see nothing of the 
Germans. We got so accustomed to the 
bullets whizzing past our ears that we lost 
all fear and advanced steadily." 

That day, however, our worthy Marine got 
no further. In the thick of the firing, a 
bullet broke his leg, and sent him rolling over 
into a pool. But as he was a Breton, with a 
great respect for Madame Saint Anne of 
Le Porzic, he made a vow that if he got off 
without further damage, he would give her 
on the day of her " pardon " a fine white 



88 DIXMUDE 

marble ex-voto, with " Thanks to Saint Anne 
for having preserved me " engraved upon it. 

All his comrades were not so fortunate, and 
at the close of the day the majority of the 
officers engaged, notably those of the second 
and third battalions of the ist Regiment, 
were hors de combat. But we held the out- 
skirts of Oud Stuyvekenskerke ; Commander 
Jeanniot and the Belgian troops, with Com- 
mander Rabot, had succeeded, according to 
the Admiral's instructions, in forming a line of 
defence facing north, which bid defiance to 
the enemy's attacks. Moreover, heavy as our 
losses were, they were nothing as compared 
with those of the Germans. The following 
dispirited comments were found in the note- 
book of a German officer of the 202nd Regiment 
of Infantry killed at Oud Stuyvekenskerke the 
following day : — 

" We are losing men on every hand, and 
our losses are out of all proportion to the 
results obtained. Our guns do not succeed 
in silencing the enemy's batteries ; our in- 
fantry attacks are ineffectual : they only 



EFFECTS OF THE BOMBARDMENT 89 

lead to useless butchery. Our losses must be 
enormous. My colonel, my major, and many 
other officers are dead or wounded. All our 
regiments are mixed up together ; the enemy's 
merciless fire enfilades us. They have a 
great many franc s-tireurs with them." 

Francs-tireurs ! We know what the 
Germans understand by this term, which 
merely means skilled marksmen.* If our 
sailors had not been so hitherto, the night 
attack which crowned this tragic day showed 
that they had become so. The attack was 
unprecedented and of unparalleled fury. 
Between 5 p.m. and midnight we and the 
Belgians had to repulse no less than fifteen 
attacks on the south sector of the defence, 
and eleven on the north and east sectors. 
The enemy charged with the cries of wild 
beasts, and for the first time our men saw 

* R. Kimley (pp. cit.), quoting Lieutenant Hebert, offers 
another and perhaps a more acceptable explanation. In 
their dark blue overcoats and their caps with red pompons, 
the sailors looked strange to the Germans, who took them 
for francs-tireurs. The terror they inspired was aggravated 
by this idea. 



90 DIXMUDE 

the brutish face of War. The next day, as 
soon as the mists lifted, the battle began again 
along the whole line. The town was bom- 
barded, the outer trenches, the trenches of the 
Yser, and, above all, the railway station at 
Caeskerke, where the Admiral was. He had to 
resign himself to a change of quarters without 
gaining much in the way of safety. The 
enemy had spies in Dixmude itself. " The 
houses of the Staff were spotted one after 
the other as soon as any change was made," 
writes an officer ; " and every day at noon, 
when we were at our midday meal, we were 
greeted by four big shells. Scarcely had a 
heavy battery been in position for five 
minutes, when the position became untenable : 
a man in a tree a hundred yards off was 
quietly making signals." 

In the north alone a certain relaxation of the 
enemy's pressure was noted. Abandoning the 
attempt to turn Dixmude by way of Oud 
Stuyvekenskerke, the Germans seemed anxious 
to push on to Pervyse and Ramscappelle, 
from which they were only separated by the 



EFFECTS OF THE BOMBARDMENT 91 

embankment of the Nieuport railway. The 
Grossetti Division endeavoured to stop the 
way with the remnant of the Belgian divisions, 
and sent a battalion of the 19th Chasseurs to 
relieve us at Oud Stuyvekenskerke. Com- 
mander Jeanniot at once went into the 
reserve trenches of the seetor. His men were 
utterly worn out. The companies which had 
occupied the outer trenches of the defence, 
and which had not been relieved for four days, 
were not less exhausted. The enemy's fire on 
the Dixmude front never ceased, the town 
heaved and shuddered at every blast, the 
paving stones were dislodged, every window 
was shattered, houses were perpetually crum- 
bling into heaps of rubble, and after each ex- 
plosion immense spirals of black smoke rose 
as high as 100 metres above the craters made 
by the shells. " During the night of Sunday, 
the 25th," notes the Marine R., on duty with 
Commander Mauros, of the third battalion, 
" we were thrice obliged to evacuate the houses 
in which we were, as they fell in upon us." 
" Dixmude is gradually crumbling away," 



92 DIXMUDE 

wrote Lieutenant S. on the following day. 
Trie Carmelites had left on October 21 ; 
their monastery, where the chaplains of the 
brigade * continued to officiate imperturbably, 
had received three big shells during the day. 
The belfry still held, but it had lost three of 
its turrets, and the charming Gothic facade 
of the town-hall had a great hole in the first 
storey. It looked like a piece of lace through 
which a clumsy fist had been thrust. The 
enemy did not even spare our ambulances. 
" A chapel in the middle of the town, protected 
by the Red Cross (Hospital of St. John), was 
shelled from end to end," says Marine F. A., 
of Audierne ; " not a single one of the sur- 
rounding churches and belfries has been left 
standing." f The worst of it was that our 
forces, greatly tried in the last encounters, no 

* The Abbe's Le Helloco and Pouchard. We have 
spoken more than once of the former, a man of great 
intelligence and of a self-abnegation carried, in the words 
of Saint Augustine, usque ad contemptum sui. His confrere 
was equally devoted. 

t " There is not a single uninjured church in the 
deanery," declared the Abbe Vanryckeghem, Vicaire of 
Dixmude. " Nearly forty churches between Nieuport and 
Ypres have been destroyed." 



EFFECTS OF THE BOMBARDMENT 93 

longer sufficed for the exigencies of the defence. 
We had to be making constant appeals to 
the depots. The winter rains had begun, 
flooding the trenches. If it had not been for 
the heavy cloth overcoats insisted on by a 
far-seeing administration, the men would 
have died of cold. Many who through 
carelessness, or in the hurry of departure, had 
left their bags at Saint-Denis, went shivering 
on guard in cotton vests, their bare feet in 
ragged slippers. All their letters are full of 
imprecations against the horrible water that 
was benumbing them, diluting the clay, and 
encasing them in a shell of mud. 

But their salvation was to come from this 
hated water. 



VIII. THE INUNDATION 

ANEW actor was about to appear on 
the scene, a new ally, slower, but 
infinitely more effectual, than the 
best reinforcements. 

Last November the Moniteur Beige pub- 
lished a royal decree conferring the Order of 
Leopold upon M. Charles Louis Kogge, garde 
water ingue of the north of Furnes, for his 
courageous and devoted services in the work 
of inundation in the Yser region. 

It was, we have been told, this M. Kogge who 
first conceived the idea of calling the waters to 
our aid. A more romantic version has it 
that the notion was suggested to the Head- 
quarters Staff by the singularly opportune 
discovery of a bundle of old revolutionary 
documents bearing upon the action brought 
in 1795 by a Flemish farmer against his land- 
lord " to recover damages for the loss he had 
suffered through the inundation of his land 
during the defence of Nieuport." Be this as 



THE INUNDATION 95 

it may, on the evening of October 25 the 
Belgian General Headquarters Staff informed 
the Admiral that it had just taken measures 
to inundate the left bank of the Yser between 
that river and the railway line from Dixmude 
to Nieuport. 

The effects of this inundation could not, 
however, be felt for the first day or two, or 
even for those immediately following. The 
word inundation generally suggests to the 
mind the image of a torrential rush of water, 
a great charge of marine or fluvial cavalry 
which sweeps all before it. There was nothing 
of the sort in this case. We were in Western 
Belgium, in an invertebrate country, without 
relief of any sort, where everything proceeds 
slowly and phlegmatically, even cataclysms. 
It is, perhaps, a pity that there is not another 
word in the language to describe the hydro- 
graphic operation we were about to witness ; 
but in default of a substantive there is a verb, 
which surprised most readers of the com- 
muniques as a neologism, but which, as a fact, 
has been used in Flanders from time im- 



96 DIXMUDE 

memorial, and has the advantage of expressing 

the nature of the operation most admirably. 

It is the verb tendre (to spread or stretch). 

They spread an inundation there as fishermen 

spread a net. No image could be more 

exact. The spreader, in this case, was at 

the locks of Nieuport. He is a head wateringue, 

commanding a dozen men armed with levers 

to manipulate the lifting-jacks. At high tide 

he had the flood-gates raised ; the sea entered, 

forcing back the fresh water of the canal and 

its tributaries ; and the sea did not run out 

again, for the flood-gates had been lowered. 

Henceforth the fresh water which flowed on 

every side into the basin of the Yser will 

find no outlet ; " without haste and without 

rest " it will add its contribution to that 

of the tide ; it will gradually overflow the 

dykes of the collecting canals, will reach the 

watergands, and cover the whole schoore with 

its meshes. Slily, noiselessly, unceasingly, 

it will rise on a soil already saturated like 

a sponge and incapable of absorbing another 

drop of water. All that falls there, whether 



THE INUNDATION 97 

it come from the sky in the form of rain, or 
from the hills of Cassel in the form of torrents, 
will remain on the surface. There is no way 
of checking the inundation as long as the 
flood-gates are not raised. He who holds 
Nieuport holds the entire district by means 
of its locks. This explains the persistence of 
the Germans in their attempts to capture it. 
Fortunately, these attempts were somewhat 
belated ; they tried a surprise by the dunes of 
Lombaertzide and Middelkerke, which might 
perhaps have succeeded but for the timely 
co-operation of the Anglo-French fleet with 
the Belgian troops : the German attack was 
driven back by the fire of the monitors, and 
failed to carry the locks of Nieuport. The 
inundation continued. When its last meshes 
were woven and all its web complete, it was to 
spread in a semicircle on a zone of 30 kilo- 
metres, and this immense artificial lagoon, 
from four to five kilometres wide and from 
three to four feet deep, in which light squadrons 
and batteries might have engaged if hard 
pressed, but for the abrupt depressions of the 



98 DIXMUDE 

watergands and collecting canals, forming 
invisible traps at every step, was to con- 
stitute the most impregnable defensive front, 
a liquid barrier defying all attacks. Dixmude, 
at the extremity of this lagoon, in the blind 
alley here formed by the Yser, the Handzaeme 
Canal, and the railway embankment, might 
aptly be compared to Quiberon ; like Quiberon, 
it would be, were its bridges destroyed, a 
sort of thin, low peninsula ; but it is a 
Flemish Quiberon anchored upon a motionless 
sea, without waves and without tides, studded 
with tree-tops and telegraph poles, and bearing 
on its dead waters the drifting corpses of 
soldiers and animals, pointed helmets, empty 
cartridge-cases and food-tins. 



IX. THE MURDER OF COMMANDER 
JEANNIOT 

ON October 25 we had not yet received 
any help from the inundation. Our 
troops were in dire need of rest, and 
the enemy was tightening his grip along the 
entire front. New reinforcements were coming 
up to fill the gaps in his ranks ; our scouts 
warned us that fresh troops were marching 
upon Dixmude by the three roads of Eessen, 
Beerst, and Woumen.* We had to expect a 
big affair the next day, if not that very night. 
It came off that night. 

About 7 o'clock the Gamas company went 
to relieve the men in the southern trenches. 
On their way, immediately outside the town, 
they fell in with a German force of about the 
same strength as themselves, which had crept 

* "Germans of" the regular army coming from the 
direction of Reims. The Boches we had had to deal 
with so far had been volunteers or reservists." (Second- 
Lieutenant X.'s note-book.) 

h 2 



ioo DIXMUDE 

up no one knew how. There was a fusillade 
and a general melee, in which our sailors 
opened a passage through the troop with 
bayonets and butt-ends, disposing of some 
forty Germans and putting the rest to 
flight.* Then there was a lull. The splash 
of rain was the only sound heard till 2 a.m., 
when suddenly a fresh outbreak of rifle-fire 
was heard near the Caeskerke station, right 
inside the defences. It was suggested that 
our men or our allies, exasperated by their 
life of continual alarms, had been carried away 
by some reckless impulse. The bravest soldiers 
admit that hallucinations are not uncommon 
at night in the trenches. All the pitfalls of 
darkness rise before the mind ; the circulation 
of the blood makes a noise like the tramp of 
marching troops ; if by chance a nervous 
sentry should fire his rifle, the whole section 
will follow suit. 

Convinced that some misunderstanding of 

* Not without losses on our side. "Saw Gamas, who has 
had fourteen of his men killed to-night, among them his 
boatswain Dodu." (Second-Lieutenant Gautier's note- 
book.) 



COMMANDER JEANNIOT 101 

this kind had taken place, the Staff, still 
quartered at the Caeskerke railway station, 
shouted to the sections to cease firing. As, 
however, the fusillade continued in the 
direction of the town, the Admiral sent one 
of his officers, Lieutenant Durand-Gasselin, 
to reconnoitre. He got as far as the Yser 
without finding the enemy ; the fusillade had 
ceased ; the roads were clear. He set out on 
his way back to Caeskerke. On the road he 
passed an ambulance belonging to the brigade 
going up towards Dixmude, which, on being 
challenged, replied : " Rouge Croix." * Rather 
surprised at this inversion, he stopped the 
ambulance ; it was full of Germans, who, 
however, surrendered without offering any 
resistance. But this capture suggested a new 
train of thought to the Staff : they were now 
certain that there had been an infantry raid 
upon the town ; the Germans in the ambulance 
probably belonged to a troop of mysterious 
assailants who had made their way into 

* I.e., instead of " Croix Rouge," the usual French 
locution. 



102 DIXMUDE 

Dixmude in the night and had vanished no 
less mysteriously after this extraordinary deed 
of daring. One of our covering trenches must 
have given way, but which ? Our allies 
held the railway line by which the enemy 
had penetrated into the defences, sounding 
the charge. . . . The riddle was very dis- 
turbing, but under the veil of a thick damp 
night, which favoured the enemy, it was 
useless to seek a solution. It was found next 
morning at dawn, when one of our detachments 
on guard by the Yser suddenly noticed in a 
meadow a curious medley of Belgians, French 
Marines, and Germans. Had our men been 
made prisoners ? This uncertainty was of 
brief duration. There was a sharp volley ; 
the sailors fell ; the Germans made off. This 
was what had happened : 

Various versions have been given of this 
incident, one of the most dramatic of the 
defence, in the course of which the heroic 
Commander Jeanniot and Dr. Duguet, chief 
officer of the medical staff, fell mortally 
wounded, with several others. The general 



COMMANDER JEANNIOT 103 

opinion, however, seems to be that the German 
attack, which was delivered at 2.30 a.m., 
was closely connected with the surprise move- 
ment attempted at 7 o'clock in the evening on 
the Eessen road and so happily frustrated by 
the intervention of the Gamas company. It is 
not impossible that it was carried out by the 
fragments of the force we had scattered, 
reinforced by new elements and charging to 
the sound of the bugle. This would explain 
the interval of several hours between the two 
attacks, which were no doubt the outcome of a 
single inspiration. 

"The night," says an eye-witness, "was 
pursuing its normal course, and as there were 
no indications of disturbance, Dr. Duguet 
took the opportunity to go and get a little 
rest in the house where he was living, which 
was just across the street opposite his ambu- 
lance. The Abbe Le Helloco, chaplain of the 
2nd Regiment, had joined him at about 1.30 
a.m. The latter admits that he was rather 
uneasy because of the earlier skirmish, in which, 
as was his habit, he had been unremitting in his 



104 DIXMUDE 

ministrations to the wounded. After a few 
minutes' talk the two men separated to 
seek their straw pallets. The Abbe had been 
asleep for an hour or two, when he was 
awakened by shots close at hand. He roused 
himself and went to Dr. Duguet, who was 
already up. The two did not exchange a 
word. Simultaneously, without taking the 
precaution of extinguishing the lights behind 
them, they hurried to the street. Enframed 
by the lighted doorway, they at once became a 
target ; a volley brought them down in a 
moment. Dr. Duguet had been struck by a 
bullet in the abdomen ; the Abbe was hit 
in the head, the arm, and the right thigh. 
The two bodies were touching each other. 
c Abbe,' said Dr. Duguet, ' we are done 
for. Give me absolution. I regret . . .' The 
Abbe found strength to lift his heavy arm 
and to make the sign of the cross upon his 
dying comrade. Then he fainted, and this 
saved him. Neither he nor Dr. Duguet had 
understood for the moment what was happen- 
ing. Whence had the band of marauders who 



COMMANDER JEANNIOT 105 

had struck them down come, and how had 
they managed to steal into our lines without 
being seen ? It was a mystery. This fusillade 
breaking out behind them had caused a certain 
disorder in the sections nearest to it, who 
thought they were being taken in the rear, 
and who would have been, indeed, had the 
attack been maintained. The band arrived in 
front of the ambulance station at the moment 
when the staff (three Belgian doctors, a few 
naval hospital orderlies, and Quartermaster 
Bonnet) were attending to Dr. Duguet, who 
was still breathing. They made the whole 
lot prisoners and carried them along in their 
idiotic rush through the streets. Both officers 
and soldiers must have been drunk. This is 
the only reasonable explanation of their mad 
venture. We held all the approaches to 
Dixmude ; the brief panic that took place in 
certain sections had been at once controlled. 
The improbability of a night attack inside 
the defences was so great that Commander 
Jeanniot, who had been in reserve that night, 
and who, roused by the firing like Dr. Duguet 



106 DIXMUDE 

and Abbe Le Helloco, had gone into the 
street to call his sector to arms, had not even 
taken his revolver in his hand. Mistaking the 
identity and the intentions of the groups he 
saw advancing, he ran towards them to 
reassure them and bring them back to the 
trenches. This little stout, grizzled officer, 
rough and simple in manner, was adored by the 
sailors. He was known to be the bravest of 
the brave, and he himself was conscious of 
his power over his men. When he recognised 
his mistake it was too late. The Germans 
seized him, disarmed him, and carried him 
off with loud c Hochs ! ' of satisfaction. The 
band continued to push on towards the Yser, 
driving a few fugitives before them, and a part 
of them succeeded in crossing the river under 
cover of the general confusion. Happily this 
did not last long. Captain Marcotte de Sainte- 
Marie, who was in command of the guard on the 
bridge, identified the assailants with the help 
of a searchlight, and at once opened fire upon 
them.* The majority of the Germans within 

* We should add, by order of Commander Varney, 



COMMANDER JEANNIOT 107 

range of our machine-guns were mown down ; 
the rest scattered along the streets and ran 
to cellars and ruins to hide themselves. But 
the head of the column had got across with 
its prisoners, whom they drove before them 
with the butt-ends of their rifles.* For four 
hours they wandered about, seeking an issue 
which would enable them to rejoin their lines. 

who, warned. by Dr. de Groote, had at once taken the 
nece sary measures. Second-Lieutenant X.'. note-book 
"ives more precise details : " We had succeeded in placing 
rnachine-guns on each side of the bridge which was a 
revolving bridge, and had just been opened by Commander 

Varney " • 

* Here there seems to have been some confusion in 
the eye-witness's account. He leads us to suppose that 
Dr. Duguet's ambulance was in the town, and that the 
Germans who killed him and wounded the Abbe Le 
Helloco went on afterwards to the bridge with their 
prisoners. " As a fact," we are now told "the affair took 
place between the bridge-which the head of a column 
had crossed by surprise, driving before them a number of 
Belgians, sailors, and perhaps some marauders—and the 
level crossing near the station of Caeskerke where the 
column was finally stopped. It was in this part of the 
street that Dr. Duguet had his dressing-station ; and it 
was there, too, that Commander Jeanniot, whose reserve 
post was at Caeskerke, came out to meet the assailants. 
And it was the fields near the south bank of the Yser to 
which the column betook itself, dragging its prisoners with 
k, when it found the road barred." (See M. Thomas 
Couture's narrative at the end of this chapter.) 



108 DIXMUDE 

It was raining the whole time. Weary of 
wading through the mud, the officers stopped 
behind a hedge to hold a council. A pale 
light began to pierce the mist ; day was 
dawning, and they could no longer hope to 
regain the German lines in a body. Prudence 
dictated that they should disperse until 
nightfall. But what was to be done with the 
prisoners ? The majority voted that they 
should be put to death. The Belgian doctors 
protested. Commander Jeanniot, who took 
no part in the debate, was talking calmly to 
Quartermaster Bonnet. At a sign from their 
leader the Boches knelt and opened fire upon 
the prisoners. The Commander fell, and as he 
was still breathing, they finished him off with 
their bayonets. The only survivors were the 
Belgian doctors, who had been spared, and 
Quartermaster Bonnet, who had only been 
hit in the shoulder. It was at this moment 
that the marauders were discovered. One 
section charged them forthwith ; another fell 
back to cut off their retreat. What happened 
afterwards ? Some accounts declare that the 



COMMANDER JEANNIOT 109 

German officers learned what it costs to 
murder prisoners, and that our men despatched 
the dogs there and then ; but the truth is, 
that, in spite of the general desire to avenge 
Commander Jeanniot, the whole band was 
taken prisoner and brought before the Admiral, 
who had only the three most prominent 
rascals of the gang executed." 

Another very interesting account of this 
episode has been communicated to us by 
M. Charles Thomas Couture, chauffeur to 
Commander Varney. 

An Unpublished Account of the Murder 
of Commander Jeanniot. 

Dixmude, Monday, October 26, 1914. 

Yesterday we were informed that a certain number 
of Germans, slipping between the trenches, had 
managed to get into Dixmude. Search was made in 
the houses and cellars, and we collected a few 
prisoners. 

This incident caused us some uneasiness, and as 
the bombardment, which generally ceased at night, 
continued persistently, I hesitated to go to bed. 
Shells were bursting quite close to our inn, the front 



no DIXMUDE 

of which was peppered with bullets. Fortunately, 
the shells were shrapnel, annoying rather than 
deadly, and as I was very tired, I made up my 
mind to get a sleep about 10 o'clock. But I lay 
down fully dressed and armed ; I did not even lay 
aside my revolver. 

One after the other the inhabitants of the inn 
followed my example. There were four of us : 
Commander Varney, Captain Monnot, Lieutenant 
Bonneau, and myself. Dr. Duguet and Abbe Le 
Helloco, who generally shared our straw, were 
detained at the ambulance by some severe cases, and 
were not expected to come in before I o'clock in the 
morning. By this time all was quiet, and the 
bombardment had ceased. 

At 3 a.m. a cyclist rushed in, crying : " Get up ! 
The Boches are coming ! " I did not for a moment 
imagine that the enemy had crossed the bridge over 
the Yser, which was some 80 or 100 metres in front 
of us. I thought that the Germans had forced the 
sailors' trenches in front of Dixmude, that they had 
entered the town in force, and that the line of defence 
was to be brought back to the canal. If such were 
the case, it was necessary to get my car ready to 
start immediately. As soon as I was awake I accord- 
ingly went out by the front door of the inn, and going 
to my car, I began to pump up the petrol. Com- 
mander Varney had come out at the same time. 

Our common living-room was feebly lighted by a 
lantern, but this sufficed to throw the figures of those 



COMMANDER JEANNIOT in 

who passed into the embrasure of the door into 
strong relief. This was the case a few minutes later 
when Dr. Duguet and Abbe Le Helloco emerged. I 
was bending down over my car, quite in the dark. 

At this moment a body of brawlers passed along 
the road, coming from the bridge and going towards 
the level crossing. They were preceded by a bugler, 
very much out of tune. In spite of the lights and 
the reports of firearms among the band, I only 
realised after they had passed that they were the 
enemy. 

But as soon as I grasped the fact I recognised that 
there was no question of getting out the car just 
then, so I followed Commander Varney, who was 
near me. " What shall I do, Commander ? " 
" Above all things, don't let them take you prisoner." 
Subsequent events made me appreciate the wisdom 
of this order. 

The Commander disappeared in the night, going 
towards the Yser to see what was happening. I 
went back into the inn by the back door, and there, 
stretched on the ground side by side, I found the 
doctor and the Abbe, on whom the Germans had 
fired at very short range. Both were wounded in 
the abdomen. Probably the same bullets went 
through them both. The doctor murmured : "lam 
hit in the loins ; I can't move my legs." The Abbe 
seemed to have but one thought : " I won't fall into 
the hands of the Germans alive." But he managed 
to give absolution to our poor doctor. 



ii2 DIXMUDE 

I went out of the inn again, and back to the 
motors, to see what was happening. I found the 
cook and the orderlies there ; they had taken their 
rifles and were awaiting events. I joined them, 
holding my revolver in my hand. 

What gave me most anxiety was that not a sound 
came from the line of the trenches. The rifles were 
all silent ; no night had been so calm. I began to 
wonder if by some extraordinary surprise all the 
sailors had been taken prisoners. 

As we knew that the enemy troop had passed us 
and gone towards the level crossing, we took our 
stand, in view of their possible return, at the corner 
of a neighbouring house, where the Belgian soldiers 
were quartered. 

Captain Ferry, who had been wounded a few 
days before and had his left arm in a sling, 
joined us. 

A suspicious rumbling was heard on the road. 
Captain Ferry advanced completely out of cover to 
reconnoitre. He found himself face to face with a 
band of Germans who barred the road level with the 
other corner of the Belgians' house. 

" Halt ! " cried the captain ; " you are my 
prisoners." 

" Not at all," replied a voice in guttural French. 
" It's you who are our prisoners." 

This somewhat comic dialogue was not continued, 
for the sailors Mazet and Pinardeau fired. The 
Germans never even attempted to retort ; they 



COMMANDER JEANNIOT 113 

allowed Captain Ferry to rejoin us quietly, and 
disappeared into the ditch by the road. 

It was now half-past three. The alarm was over, 
and had lasted barely half an hour. Our little party 
took refuge in the cowshed, for the German guns had 
begun to send us shrapnel shells, which exploded 
high in the air, but nevertheless covered us with 
fragments. All we could do was to wait for the 
day, which at this date broke about half-past four. 
Lieutenant Bonneau had brought a half-section of 
sailors to our inn, and these began to explore the 
neighbourhood. 

Some Belgian soldiers joined the sailors, and a 
battue of Boches began in the marshy meadows. 
We heard cries of " There they are ! There they 
are ! " and shots were fired ; then " Don't fire, 
they are sailors." Presently it was all over, and 
prisoners passed on their way to the Admiral, who 
was installed at the level crossing. 

We then heard that nothing at all had happened 
in the trenches. The troop that had attacked us 
was composed of Boches who had managed to creep 
into the town secretly. Led by one or two officers, 
they had crossed the bridge over the canal, killing 
the sentries, seriously wounding Lieutenant de 
Lambertye, and then pushing forward. As they 
passed they went into the houses that showed lights, 
notably that occupied by the staff of the 1st Regi- 
ment, where they killed two cooks and wounded a 
chauffeur. As we have seen, they then shot our 



ii 4 DIXMUDE 

doctor and our chaplain, and their military operations 
ended herewith, for their subsequent deeds were 
murder pure and simple. 

I was told the story at dawn, when I found myself 
face to face with Quartermaster Bonnet, chauffeur to 
the adjutant-major, who, to my great surprise, had 
his right arm in a sling. " Well, M. Couture," he said, 
" I shan't be able to drive Captain Monnot any 
more." I questioned him, and he then told me that 
he, assisted by some Belgian orderlies and doctors, 
had gone out to take Dr. Duguet to the ambulance. 
Suddenly the party found themselves face to face 
with the German troop, which was returning. The 
Boches seized the stretcher-bearers, and the doctor 
was left by the side of the ditch. Perhaps he was 
finished off there. 

The Germans had several other prisoners, notably 
Commander Jeanniot. This remarkable man, who 
was no less beloved than esteemed, was with the first 
battalion, which he commanded, in reserve some 
distance to the rear. The noise and the shots awoke 
him, and he came out alone upon the road to see 
what was happening. The Germans crouching in the 
ditches had no difficulty in seizing him, and his five 
stripes made them realise the importance of their 
capture. 

In all there were some dozen prisoners, whom the 
Germans carried along with them across the fields, 
and whom they did not scruple to put in front of 
them during the firing. This explains the hesitation 



COMMANDER JEANNIOT 115 

shown during the chase. Seeing that they were 
caught, the German officers were not long in making 
up their minds. " Shoot the prisoners ! " It must 
be noted that there was a certain reluctance in the 
German ranks, perhaps even a certain opposition to 
this barbarous order. We learned later that the 
recalcitrants were Berlin students who had volunteered 
for service. Was this a movement of humanity or 
merely a measure of precaution taken with a view to 
their own fate ? 

However, there are always some ready to carry out 
brutal orders. The Mausers were fired at the heads 
of the prisoners. Commander Jeanniot was struck 
by several bullets, the whole of the front of his skull 
being blown off. Several of the Belgians fell. My 
comrade Bonnet, if I understood him aright, made the 
movement of a child who dodges a box on the ear. 
That saved him ; the bullet aimed at his head went 
into his right shoulder. At this moment he saw our 
sailors and the Belgians coming up, and running as 
fast as he could lay legs to the ground, he called to 
them : " Go at them ; there are only about forty 
of them left." The rest had made off across the 
fields. 
At 7 a.m. they were all prisoners. 
The Admiral at once decided that the murderers 
should be shot there and then. But as Frenchmen 
are not given to wholesale executions, the prisoners 
who had been rescued were called upon to point out 
the ringleaders. 



n6 DIXMUDE 

A few seconds later four volleys told me that 
military justice had taken its rapid course. 

Almost at the same moment the body of Com- 
mander Jeanniot was carried in. His cyclists and 
his chauffeur would not allow anyone but themselves 
to render him this last service. They carried their 
chief on a stretcher borne on their shoulders, and "all 
had tears in their eyes. 

The rest of the morning was quiet. A German 
effort was being made further to the north, where we 
heard furious fighting. 

As we were drinking our coffee the Senegalese 
riflemen arrived to support the sailors. They were 
received with joy, for the brigade was much 
exhausted. 



X. IN THE TRENCHES 

THUS ended this dramatic episode, of 
which neither the genesis nor the 
results have been fully elucidated so 
far. Did the German troop which overran 
the town during the night, and of which only 
a portion got away to the meadows with the 
prisoners, consist of a battalion or a half- 
battalion ? The fire of Captain Marcotte de 
Sainte-Marie's guns had laid a good many 
of the enemy low. " We were walking over 
their corpses in the street," wrote Marine 
H. G.* The next day we turned a fair 
number of the assailants out of the cellars 
where they had hidden. But the majority, 
aided by mysterious accomplices, certainly 
managed to escape. 

In any case, the surprise had been a sharp 

* " Blood ran in the streets like water," said Jean 
Claudius still more emphatically, according to a witness. 
This was probably the origin of the fantastic accounts which 
appeared in the press at this period, most of them purely 
imaginary. 



n8 DIXMUDE 

lesson, showing us how necessary it was that 
our positions should be immediately rein- 
forced. The Admiral represented this to Head- 
quarters, and two battalions of Senegalese were 
despatched from Loo. Meanwhile the bom- 
bardment had been resumed. It became very 
intense between eleven and three o'clock, and 
was directed mainly to the bridges of Dixmude 
and the trenches in the cemetery. We had 
some heavy casualties there, notably Lieutenant 
Eno * and part of the seventh company of the 

* We must quote this short passage from the eloquent 
speech made at the funeral of this brave officer at Lannion 
by Second-Lieutenant de Cuverville, representing Admiral 
Berryer : " The order to mobilise found Ernest Eno at 
Brest, engaged in training those very battalions he was 
later to lead against the enemy ; and no one could have 
been better qualified than he to give our young recruits 
not only professional instruction, but those lessons of 
manliness and patriotism which go to the heart, and make 
men strong and courageous. For he was himself a hero. 
A self-made man, he had raised himself step by step on 
the steep ladder of his calling. He was a true sailor. He 
went off with the ist Regiment of Marines on August 13, 
. . . He fell at the head of his men under intense fire 
round the cemetery of Dixmude, his thigh fractured by a 
fragment of shell. He was not fated to recover from his 
terrible wound. He died, uniting in his last prayers to 
God his dear ones and his beloved Brittany, which he was 
to see no more." An operation had been performed on 



IN THE TRENCHES 119 

second battalion. But the moral of the men 
was perfectly maintained. We may cite the 
case of Quartermaster Leborgne, wounded 
in the head and taken to the dressing-station 
during a lull in the fighting, who escaped when 
he heard the cannonade resumed and came 
back to die at his post, or the bugler Chaupin, 
who, seeing the recruits arching their backs 
under the hail of bullets, cried, " Look at me, 
little ones," and drawing himself up to his 
full height with magnificent bravery, crossed 
the danger zone, carrying his comrades along 
in the wake of his heroism.* Thanks to 
the reconnaissances of his airmen and the 
spies he had in the town, the enemy's fire was 
surprisingly accurate. " In the space of two 
hours, from half-past ten to half-past twelve 
in the morning," wrote one of the officers who 
commanded a much-exposed section, Second- 
Lieutenant T. S., " some fifty shrapnel shells 

Eno on the battlefield by his fellow-citizen and friend 
Dr. Taburet, one of the doctors of the brigade, who showed 
the most supreme contempt of danger under fire in 
attendance on our wounded. 
* Dr. Caradec, op. cit. 



120 DIXMUDE 

fell round us. At one o'clock a quarter of 
my men were out of action. I asked for 
reinforcements and provisions ; we had been 
in the firing line for sixty hours. The Com- 
mander gave me a verbal order to fall back. 
I consulted my petty officers and my men. 
c Shall we fall back without being relieved ? ' 
6 We can't do it, Lieutenant.' An hour 
later I received a written order to abandon 
the trench. I had to obey, after we had 
buried our dead and carried off our wounded. 
You see, dear parents, what our sailors will 
do : they will hold out to the last gasp. That 
same evening the trench was occupied by 
another section of the brigade." 

And that same evening of October 26 this 
trench — or another — was again attacked, and 
was only saved for us by a prodigy of heroism. 
The enemy had advanced to within a few 
yards, and charged, shouting " Hurrah ! " 
Our machine-guns were very dirty and would 
not work.* But Lieutenant Martin des 

* In less critical circumstances the same accident had 
happened to Second-Lieutenant Gautier, and was the 



IN THE TRENCHES 121 

Pallieres was in command of the section. 
It was holding the road to Woumen, between 
the wall of the cemetery and a trench dug 
on the other side in a beetroot field. Des 
Pallieres sprang upon the parapet. 

" Boys," he cried, " we must receive these 
gentry with cold steel. Fix bayonets ! " 

And when one of the Marines, a Parisian, 
who had charged too vigorously, lamented 
the loss of his " hat-pin " (his bayonet), which 
he had left in a German hide, Des Pallieres 
replied : " Do as I do ; charge with your 
head."* The next day he was killed by a shell. 

occasion of an amusing little scene, which might have been 
taken from Le'onec and Gerveze's sketches of Marines : 
" Yesterday I was going at the Germans with machine- 
guns at 1,200 metres on a road from which I finally cut 
them off. All of a sudden the guns jammed. I yelled 
from my blockhouse: 'What's the matter?^ ' Guns 
jammed.' 'Tell the gunner from me that he's an ass.' 
The communicator, a worthy Breton fisherman, repeated 
gravely: 'The Lieutenant says that the gunner is an ass.' 
The gunner was one Primat. A few days later,_ on 
November 10, in submerged Dixmude, this same Primat 
(the orderly of the Second-Lieutenant), who had survived 
his officer, used his machine-guns with such skill and cool- 
ness against a German column that he stopped it dead, 
mowing down three sections." 

* This story is told by the Marine Georges Delaballe. 



122 DIXMUDE 

Meanwhile the brigade had passed under 
the command of General Grossetti, who had 

Such was the ardour communicated by Des Pallieres to his 
men, that the next day a Marine and a Boche were found 
" lying dead one upon the other, the Marine's fingers thrust 
through the German's cheek, and still clutching it." A stray 
bullet had killed them both. What had exasperated the 
Marines was that the major who led the attack wore a large 
Red Cross armlet. Their native honesty was revolted by 
this constant recourse to ignoble ruses, by which our enemies 
have dishonoured even their own heroism. Martin des 
Pallieres was the nephew of the Admiral who commanded 
the Marines in 1 870. " He was a brave man, whose courage 
was combined with great simplicity and gaiety. He was 
killed by a big shell in the middle of the group of machine- 
guns he was working under a furious fire," writes a cor- 
respondent. Dr. Caradec points out that this night of 
October 26 was particularly tragic ; and in support of this 
statement he quotes an incident horrible enough, indeed, 
from the narrative of the naval mechanician Le L. : — 

"The Germans had taken some French trenches, and 
shells were raining thickly upon us. All of a sudden some 
of our men were engulfed in a mass of dibris. As one of 
my friends was half buried in the earth, I and another 
went to help him ; but a shell fell right upon him, and I 
in my turn was buried up to the neck. Night was coming 
on fast. I spent fourteen hours of anguish in this position. 
Furious fighting was going on. Two friends were moaning 
near me. The one nearest begged me to help him, but 
I was held fast as in a vice, and had to look on helpless as 
he died. My own strength began to fail. I became 
unconscious a few hours after I had been buried. What 
made me suffer most was to see the Germans a few yards 
from me. I could see all they were doing, all their death- 
dealing preparations. During the night the Senegalese 



IN THE TRENCHES 123 

undertaken the defence of the line of the 
Yser as far as, and inclusive of, Dixmude 
(detachment of the army of Belgium under 
General d'Urbal). The day of the 27th 
passed without an attack in force ; the enemy 
merely bombarded us. He gave us time to 
breathe the following night and morning 
till 9 a.m. Then the hurly-burly began again. 
An officer of the Naval Reserve who received 
his baptism of fire that day, Lieutenant 
Alfred de la Barre de Nanteuil, grandson of 
General Le Flo, wrote to his family that he 
had been specially favoured. " It was a fine 
christening, plenty of sweetmeats, the whole 
show, bullets, shrapnel, and, above all, the 
famous ' saucepans ' (marmites). Chance 
treated me well." In his section alone there 
were four killed, twelve wounded, and eleven 

riflemen retook our lost trenches; they set to work to 
clear away the rubbish and found my two dead friends near 
me. One of the Senegalese stepped on my head. Reeling 
something under his feet, he bent down and saw me 1 hey 
got me out and took me to the first ambulance. In a few 
hours I was fully conscious again. You can imagine how 1 
rejoiced to find myself among friends. I felt like one risen 
from the dead." 



124 DIXMUDE 

missing. This was the prelude to a sudden 
attack, directed* against the trenches in the 
cemetery, to which the enemy paid particular 
attention. But we A knew this, and had put 
our steadiest troops there. The attack was 
again repulsed, thanks mainly to the firmness 
of the first musketry instructor, Le Breton, 
who had already been wounded on the 24th, 
and who took command of the company 
when all the officers had been put out of 
action.* 

* Among them was Second-Lieutenant Gautier. The 
following order, communicated to us by his family, was 
found with his papers : " Monsieur Gautier, — By superior 
orders, I am sending a section to relieve you, and to instruct 
you to go with your section near the cemetery, behind the 
wall or on the railway embankment, as may seem best to 
you and to the officer in the adjoining trenches. Des 
Pallieres' section, which was in the cemetery, has been 
annihilated, Des Pallieres himself killed and buried in the 
debris of the trench." Second-Lieutenant Gautier was killed 
at 9 o'clock in the evening. "We were having our dinner 
in the trench," wrote Lieutenant Gamas a few days later, 
" when the order came for him to go to a dangerous position 
to replace Des Pallieres, who had just been killed there. 
The last words your son-in-law said to me were : * Captain, 
it's my turn.' We shook hands warmly, looking affection- 
ately at each other. The next day 1 heard that my poor 
friend was dead. He had been hit in the forehead by a 
German bullet at the moment when, attacked by very 



IN THE TRENCHES 125 

Our allies were less fortunate on the line 
from Dixmude to Nieuport, where the 4th 
Belgian Division, overwhelmed by superior 
numbers, had to fall back beyond Ramscappelle 
and Pervyse. The strategic importance of 
these two villages made it imperative to 
retake them immediately. Every available 
man was sent from the brigade on the evening 
of the 29th. This did not prevent the enemy 
from continuing his bombardment of Dixmude, 
to which this time we were able to reply very 
efficaciously with our heavy artillery. This 
secured us a fairly quiet night. Such nights 
were few and far between in the brigade. 
" We don't know what it is to sleep," wrote 
a sailor. " We haven't closed our eyes for 
ten days." Perhaps the enemy was as weary 
as our men. His sole manifestation that 
night was to send a few shrapnel shells upon 
Caeskerke and the cross-roads where the 
Admiral had taken up his position. Perhaps, 

superior numbers with three machine-gun sections, he had 
put his head out in order to regulate his fire and do his 
duty thoroughly. He fell nobly, leaving a glorious and 
honoured name to his wife and children." 



126 DIXMUDE 

too, he was less interested in Dixmude than 
in Ramscappelle and Pervyse at this stage of 
the operations. At dawn he rushed Rams- 
cappelle, but he was repulsed at Pervyse, which 
the two companies of Rabot's battalion 
defended with their accustomed vigour. The 
night before, however, the railway bridge of 
Dixmude had been demolished by a big shell. 

In the brief intervals of this exhausting 
struggle, the eyes of the defenders were turned 
inquiringly on the schoore of the Yser. How 
slowly the inundation announced by the 
Belgian Headquarters Staff on the 25 th 
seemed to be spreading ! The progress it had 
made in five days was almost imperceptible. 
And yet surely it was advancing now on the 
great level plain ; the waUrgands were over- 
flowing ; the meshes of the watery net were 
drawing together and encircling villages and 
farms. Near Ramscappelle and Pervyse it 
had already formed a large continuous 
expanse. 

That day the first tactical effects of the 
inundation made themselves felt on our north. 



IN THE TRENCHES 127 

Ramscappelle had been retaken by the 42nd 
Division in a brilliant bayonet charge ; the 
enemy had been driven back behind the em- 
bankment of the Dixmude-Nieuport railway, 
whence he had almost immediately retired upon 
the Yser : he was falling back not only before 
our troops, but before the insidious rising of 
the waters. The plan of the German General 
Staff was foiled. In their attempt upon Dun- 
kirk they had not reckoned upon the inter- 
vention of the Anglo-French fleet, which 
prevented them from making their way along 
the dunes of the seashore, nor upon the 
advantages offered to the defence by the 
inundation of the basin of the Yser. The key 
of the position was neither at Dixmude, 
Pervyse, Ramscappelle, nor Ypres, as they had 
supposed, but in the pocket of the head 
wateringue in charge of the locks at Nieuport. 
At this moment of the crisis a certain 
vacillation seemed to prevail in the councils 
of the enemy. The German Staff, though 
they had not forgotten Dixmude, were appar- 
ently casting their eyes in other directions. 



128 DIXMUDE 

On the 30th and 31st they barely sent their 
daily ration of shrapnel and big shells to our 
trenches in the cemetery and the houses near 
the bridge. It had been raining incessantly 
for three days ; our men were standing half- 
way up their legs in water in the trenches. 
What had become of the spruce " young 
ladies with the red pompons " of the early 
days ? " You should see us walk," wrote a 
sailor, one L., of Audierne. " We are like 
old fellows of seventy. I have no feeling in 
my poor knees and elbows." But the most 
severe suffering was caused by want of socks ; 
the men could hardly stand on their naked 
feet, purple with cold, in their hard boots. 
" This is the campaign of frozen toes," says 
one of the suiferers. Inured to discipline 
and naturally fatalistic, they did not complain, 
and looked to their families to help them in 
their trouble. " Do send me some socks. 
I have to go barefoot, and it is very cold," 
wrote one sailor, J. F., of Le Passage Lauriec ; 
and in his next letter he repeats : " I can tell 
you, my dear parents, that the weather is 



IN THE TRENCHES 129 

very bad here, rain and wind every day, and 
the cold ! Sleeping in the trenches is not 
very easy. I have not closed my eyes for a 
fortnight, what with the cold and the shells 
and bullets. Still I keep a good heart. My 
feet are bare in my shoes, and they are always 
icy cold. If you send me some socks, will 
you put some tobacco in with them ? " 
Another letter is in the same strain : " Dear 
mother, you say my brother is still drinking, 
and this is very wrong of him, but that he 
took the socks off his own feet to send them 
to me. I thank him very much, for I did 
want them badly." The Breton drunkard 
can be generous ! 

There were lucky ones here as elsewhere. 
Such was H. L., who made himself some 
mittens with a pair of old socks found in a 
German trench. Men are not very squeamish 
in war-time, when they have been wearing the 
same ragged filthy garments for a month. 
" You could not touch my vest with a pair of 
tongs, it is so dirty," wrote the same H. L. 
to his sister. The officers were no better 



1 3 o DIXMUDE 

off, except that they had socks. " We 
never change ; we never wash ; we never brush 
our hair," wrote Alfred de Nanteuil. " I have 
been living in the same grime ever since I left 
Brest. The only things I have changed are 
my socks. All my ideas of hygiene are upset, 
for, on the whole, I have never felt so well." 
Some few complain of the food. " I have 
been three days in the trenches without enough 
to eat," grumbles one sailor J. L. R. But the 
majority declare that the tinned meat was 
not bad, especially when it was warmed, and 
that, on the whole, they got enough.* As for 
drink, with the exception of the coffee, pro- 
nounced " famous," the unanimous verdict 
was that it was execrable, neither wine nor 
beer, only stagnant water ; " and they say, 
besides, that the Boches have poisoned it." 
The men were recommended only to drink it 
in their coffee, well boiled. " I lived for days 
on bread and sugar, with a cup of coffee for 

* All the officers we have seen or who have written to us 
declare that the transport service was excellent throughout 
the defence, in spite of the greatest difficulties, and that the 
naval commissariat was irreproachable. 



IN THE TRENCHES 131 

an occasional treat, " wrote Alfred de Nanteuil. 
" All the water in the district is polluted. 
So I go very well for a week without drinking 
anything but coffee." Frangois Alain, for 
one, was four days without food or drink, 
lying among the straw in a barn where twenty- 
seven of his comrades had been bayoneted. 
How did this nineteen-year-old conscript 
escape the Boches who had remained in the 
neighbourhood ? Through a little hole he 
had made with his knife in one of the tiles of 
the roof he observed all their movements, 
and took note of their trenches and the em- 
placements of their cannon and their machine- 
guns ; and one fine night, when there was 
not too much moonlight, he crawled out, 
killing a German officer who was reconnoitring 
the French positions, and got back into our 
lines with a cargo of precious information, a 
thick coating of mud, and teeth sharpened by a 
fast of ninety-six hours.* And these men, 
dripping with wet, with empty stomachs and 

* He was decorated with the military medal by General 
Foch in person. 



1 32 DIXMUDE 

burning heads, never lost heart for a moment. 
The same note recurs in all their letters : 
" In spite of this, all goes well, and we are not 
downhearted, especially when we can have a 
go at the Bodies." The one thing consoles 
them for the other. They know the perils of 
the trenches, and they prefer them to the 
inactivity of being kept in reserve. " We 
have had twelve days of fighting now," 
wrote the Marine C, of Audierne, " and this 
evening, I am glad to say, we are to be in the 
first line, for it is better to be under fire than 
resting." Was this paradox or braggadocio ? 
Not at all. They spoke as they thought. 
They courted danger as other men shun it. 



XL THE ATTACK ON THE CHATEAU 
DE WOUMEN 

ALL SAINTS' DAY was nearly as quiet 
as the preceding forty-eight hours. 
We re-established our trenches, and 
the Admiral reorganised his regiments and 
transferred his headquarters to Oudecap- 
pelle. In his journal Alfred de Nanteuil, 
who had been with our second line from 
the day before, notices the truce from 
marmites, if not from shrapnel and bullets, 
" singing past a little like summer flies." But 
farms were blazing all round the vast horizon, 
lighting up the November night and accentu- 
ating the fact that, although the enemy's 
attentions had changed in form, they had put 
on no amenity. " One of my men," says De 
Nanteuil, " found the severed hand of a 
small child in a German's knapsack. . . ." 
And at Eessen, where the vicaire was a young 
priest of twenty-eight, the Abbe Deman, his 
murderers amused themselves by forcing him 



134 DIXMUDE 

to dig his own grave before they shot him in 
the graveyard of his own church.* 

A day later the temporary inertia of the 
enemy was explained. A few mar mites on our 
trenches and on the farms occupied by our 
supply services were not enough to deceive us. 
We had been aware for several days of a 
continuous growling in the south-west, on the 
Ypres road. The enemy had transferred a 
part of his forces towards Mercken, where he 
was seeking contact with our Territorials and 
with the British troops. It seemed a good 
opportunity to break the iron girdle which 
held us and to afford some relief to our 
positions. The moral of our men had never 
been better. Rumours of a general offensive 
were current in the brigade, and nothing 
stimulates the French soldier more than the 
hope of an advance. On November 3 French 
aeroplanes passed over Dixmude, towards the 
German lines, and a balloon was hanging in 
the sky towards the west. 

* Declaration of the Abbe Vanryckeghem, who affirms 
that the cures of Saint Georges, of Mannekensverke, and of 
Vladsloo were also executed. 



CHATEAU DE WOUMEN 135 

"Happy omen ! " wrote De Nanteuil. "We 
have been without such encouragements all 
through the long defence. . . . Now my spirits 
rise. Everything points to an advance. The 
marmites have disappeared, for which no one 
is sorry. I have been in the first line since 
last night. The sun is shining ; the lark is 
singing ; the mud is drying. We are fearful to 
behold. Relieved by the Belgians in the 
night, I have to find and guide those who have 
to take the place of my company. On my 
way back, worn out, I stop a barrel of Belgian 
soup and have a delicious pull at it. My 
battalion is in reserve since last night. Passed 
the night in a barn, men in the trench. 
To-day it has been a case of ' packs on ' ever 
since the morning." 

" Where are we off to ? " said this intrepid 
officer to himself. " Perhaps," he thought, 
" nowhere ! Anyway, the guns are raging, 
and this time it is our own beloved guns, 
which we have awaited so impatiently. I 
cannot hear the others ; I think it is all 
right." 



136 DIXMUDE 

Alfred de Nanteuil was not mistaken. 
This time it was our 75 's which led the dance. 
The General had decided that an attack 
should debouch from the town " supported by 
a powerful mass of artillery and having for 
main objective the Chateau on the road to 
Woumen, about a kilometre from Dixmude." 
The attack was to be made by four battalions 
of infantry of the 42nd Division, a Marine 
battalion under Commandant de Jonquieres 
acting as support, and the rest of the brigade 
as reserve. The whole was under the com- 
mand of General Grossetti — Grossetti the 
invulnerable, as he had been called ever since 
his splendid defence of Pervyse, where he 
faced the shells sitting on a camp-stool. 

The attack began about eight o'clock by 
an energetic clearing of the whole position. 
There was, perhaps, some little hesitation in 
the movements which followed. The fact 
is that by not moving off until half-past eleven 
in the morning our infantry lost much of the 
advantage given by the artillery preparation. 
The enemy had had time to pull himself to- 



CHATEAU DE WOUMEN 137 

gether. The eighth battalion of Chasseurs 
could not debouch from the cemetery by the 
Woumen road until supported by the De 
Jonquieres battalion. Then it was checked 
at the end of 200 metres. At the same time 
the 151st Infantry had made good a similar 
advance on the Eessen road. That was the total 
gain of the day. We renewed the offensive at 
3 next morning, but with no more success 
than the day before. The attack always 
lacked " go." We scarcely advanced at all, 
well supported as we were by our 75 's, which 
once more showed their superiority over the 
German artillery. The General now de- 
termined to reinforce the attack with the 
whole 42nd Division and two fresh battalions 
of Marines. A day was taken up by pre- 
parations for the passage of the Yser, a 
kilometre below Dixmude. For this purpose 
two flying bridges were brought down from 
the town. There was a thick fog, the best 
sort of weather for such an operation. One 
of the Marine battalions was directed to 
attack on a line parallel to the Yser. The 



138 DIXMUDE 

remaining two, crossing higher up, were to 
make straight for the Chateau, while the 
8th Chasseurs were to prolong the attack to 
the north. Fifty guns concentrated their fire 
on the buildings and the ground immediately 
about them. But this enchanted castle, with 
its fougasses, its deep trenches, its lines of 
barbed wire, its loopholed walls, its machine- 
guns on every storey, and its flanking fire, gave 
out a sort of repelling electricity which had 
the effect, if not of destroying the elan of our 
troops, at least of curiously blunting it. The 
ground, seamed with watercourses, was un- 
favourable, and trouble brooded in the fog. 
In short, when night fell we were still a quarter 
of a mile from the Chateau ; we had not even 
reached the park. On the Eessen side we 
had made no progress. Finally, the Belgians 
near Beerst, who were defending the north 
front of Dixmude, sent word that they were 
no longer enough to man the trenches, and 
the Admiral had to send to their help two 
companies of the De Kerros battalion from the 
first reserve. This unwelcome necessity was 



CHATEAU DE WOUMEN 139 

made up for by the arrival of two long 120-mm. 
pieces, which were at once put in battery 
south of the level crossing at Caeskerke. 

However, the night of November 5 was 
quiet all round Dixmude ; but at dawn the 
attack was renewed. This time we had good 
reason to hope for success. Rising from the 
provisional trenches, our battalions moved 
simultaneously in echelon across the plain. 
The charge sounded, shouts of "Vive la 
France ! " broke out, and, in spite of terrible 
machine-gun and rifle fire, the farm and the 
park were carried with a rush. Our men were 
at the foot of the Chateau. But there the 
rush was stopped. Contrary to report, the 
Chateau was not taken. The internal defences 
had been organised in the most formidable 
way, perhaps even before the war began. 
The enemy left in our hands some hundred 
prisoners, who had been barricaded in the 
pavilion at the main gate.* At nightfall 

* This, however, is not certainly established. For this 
account of the closing scenes of the attack we have followed 
the narrative of the correspondent of La Libertt, which 
appeared to us trustworthy. This correspondent says, " They 



140 DIXMUDE 

the order was given to retire. The De Jon- 
quieres battalion returned to its billets. The 
42nd Division went off in another direction,* 
and the brigade was again left alone atDixmude 
with a handful of Senegalese and the Belgians.! 

[the prisoners] had no time to retreat, so sudden and furious 
was the attack. Carried away by their excitement, the 
Marines never saw that the pavilion was full of Germans. 
It was not until three hours later that a Prussian non-com- 
missioned officer walked unarmed out of the building and sur- 
rendered with his party to the first French officer he met." 
We have been authoritatively told that nothing of the kind 
took place. " The attack reached the Chateau, but failed to 
carry it." 

* At Dixmude the 4th and 5 th had passed in com- 
parative tranquillity. " It rains," writes Alfred de Nanteuil 
on the 4th, "five hours drawn up on the road, fully 
accoutred. Mud frightful. Walked through Dixmude — a 
vision of horror, lights of pillagers, carcases, indescribable ruins. 
. . . Passed the night at a deserted farm, full of corpses, 
utterly sacked and ruined. Plenty of evidence that the 
owners were well-behaved, pious, and honest Belgian culti- 
vators. The night fairly calm, so we had six hours of sleep 
in our wet clothes. Impossible to change." The 5 th : 
"To-day the weather beautiful, the sun shining. Every- 
thing calm. In the watercourses we see reflected the 
vaporous landscapes of the great Flemish masters. The 
caitle which have escaped the bombardment stand about on 
the dykes. At last one is able to breathe, ... to be glad 
one lives. I begin to think we shall be here for a long 
time." 

t It came at this juncture under the command of General 
Bidon. Shortly before it had received an interesting visit. 
On November 2 a naval lieutenant, De Perrinelle, writes in 



CHATEAU DE WOUMEN 141 

" We don't budge," writes De Nanteuil on 
November 6. " Our reinforcements are being 
sent back. Visited the church and Hotel 
de Ville of Dixmude. Frightful ! They are 
nothing but shapeless ruins. There is not 
a whole house left. Certain quarters are 
destroyed down to their very foundations ; 
they are nothing but heaps of stone and 
bricks. . . . Messina is in better case than 
this unhappy town." 

his diary that Colonel Seely, sometime Minister of War 
in England, had visited this front and had told them that 
they had saved the situation by their vigorous resistance. 



XII. THE DEATH OF DIXMUDE 

SHE is not quite dead yet, however. 
Scalped, shattered, and burnt as she 
is, she still holds a spark of life as 
long as we are there. This charnel-house in 
which we are encamped, with its streets, 
which are nothing but malodorous paths 
winding among corpses, heaps of broken stone 
and brick, and craters opened by the Boche 
marmiteS) still beats with life in its depths. 
Existence has become subterranean. Dixmude 
has catacombs into which our men pour 
when they leave the trenches. And they are 
not all soldiers who explore the recesses of 
these vaults and cellars. The suspicious 
lights alluded to by Alfred de Nanteuil are 
not, perhaps, always carried by pillagers. 
Mysteriously enough, one house in the town 
has escaped the bombardment. It is the 
flour factory near the bridge, and its cement 
platform still dominates the valley of the Yser. 
The 42nd Division left us two of its batteries 



THE DEATH OF DIXMUDE 143 

of 75 's when it moved off. That was some- 
thing, of course, though not enough to make 
up for the disablement of 58 out of the 72 guns 
we originally had for the defence of our front 
The only formidable guns we have are the 
heavy ones, but they are without the mobility 
of the 75 's. And now apparently our attack 
on the Chateau of Woumen has disquieted 
the Germans, who are again in force before 
Dixmude. The bombardment of the town 
and of the trenches has recommenced, and 
last night we had to repulse a pretty lively 
attack on our trenches at the cemetery. 
There is also pressure along the Eessen road, 
with considerable losses at both points. A 
renewal of the attack to-night seems probable. 
And our ranks are already thin ! * 

* For the period between October 24 and November 6 
the names of the following officers who fell must be added 
to those already given : killed or dead of their wounds, 
Lieutenants Cherdel and Richard, Second-Lieutenants Rousset 
and Le Coq ; among those wounded, but not mortally, 
Lieutenants Antoine, "son of Admiral Antoine and the 
model of a perfect officer " (private correspondence), and 
Revel, who, when severely wounded in the thigh, ordered 
his decimated company to retire, "leaving him in the 
trench where he had fallen." 



144 DIXMUDE 

" Mother," writes a Marine from Dixmude 
on November 7, " it is with my cartridge 
belt on my back and sheltered from the 
German machine-guns that I send you these 
few lines to say that my news is good, and 
that I hope it is the same with you and the 
family. But, mother, I don't expect that 
either you or the family will ever see me 
again. None of us will come back. But I 
shall have given my life in doing my duty as 
a French soldier-sailor. I have already had 
two bullets, one in the sleeve of my great-coat, 
the other in my right cartridge case. The 
third will do better." 

On the same day another Marine writes 
home : " Out of our squad of 16, we still 
have three left." However, the night of the 
6th and the day which followed were quiet 
enough. The disappointment caused by the 
failure of our attack on the Chateau was already 
almost forgotten, and our hopes were again 
rising. 

" I think," wrote Alfred de Nanteuil, " that 
my company will not stir from this for some 



THE DEATH OF DIXMUDE 145 

time. I have to furnish reinforcing parties as 
they are wanted, the rest of my men and myself 
staying in the trench, which we are always 
improving. We have a farmhouse near by 
which allows us to eat in comfort. And we 
have plenty of straw." 

The general impression is that we are held 
from one end of the front to the other. 
" Bombardment always and musketry, a 
siege war, in short. It will come to an end 
some day. Meanwhile," says De Nanteuil, 
gaily, " our spirits and health are good." 
But this very afternoon certain suspicious 
movements were descried on the further bank 
of the Yser. As it was easy to bombard this 
part of the hostile front, a gun was promptly 
trained in that direction. Was it a decoy, 
or was some spy from behind sending signals ? 
The gun no sooner came into action than a 
German battery was unmasked upon it, killing 
Captain Marcotte de Sainte-Marie, who was 
controlling the fire.* 

* Marcotte de Sainte-Marie was provisionally succeeded 
at the head of his battalion by Lieutenant Dordet, who 
acquitted himself admirably. 



146 DIXMUDE 

Thenceforward attacks never ceased. The 
night between the 7th and 8th was nothing 
but a long series of attempts on our front, 
which were all repulsed. They began again at 
daylight against the trenches at the cemetery. 
There the enclosing wall had been battered 
down for some time past by the German 
artillery. Through the loopholes in our 
parapets one could see the wide stretch of 
beetroots on the edge of which we were 
fighting, our backs to Dixmude. Away on 
the horizon the Chateau of Woumen, on its 
solitary height, rose from the surrounding 
woods and dominated the position. Little 
clouds of white smoke hung from the trees, 
which seemed to be shedding down. In his 
invariable fashion, the enemy was preparing 
his attacks by a systematic clearing of the 
ground ; shrapnel and marmites were smashing 
the tombstones, decapitating the crosses, 
breaking up the iron grilles, the crowns of 
immortelles, and the coffins themselves. The 
Flemish subsoil is so permeable that coffins 
are not sunk more than a couple of feet below 



THE DEATH OF DIXMUDE 147 

the surface, so that their occupants were 
strewn about in a frightful way. Several 
Marines were wounded by splinters of bone 
from these mobilised corpses. ... In the 
fogs of Flanders, when the mystery of night 
and the great disc of the moon added their 
phantasmagoria to the scene, all this sur- 
passed in macabre horror the most ghastly 
inventions of romantic fiction and legend. 
Familiar as our Bretons were with super- 
natural ideas, they shivered at it all, and 
welcomed an attack as a relief from continual 
nightmare.* 

" Although we did not give way at all," 
writes a Marine, " we understood that every- 
one was not made like ourselves and the 
Senegalese. We took pity on the poor worn- 
out Belgians, who had come to the end of 

* And yet these cemetery trenches afforded comparative 
security. Before reaching them it was necessary to cross a 
perfectly flat zone of 60 metres, continually swept by rifle 
fire and shrapnel. "This we passed at the double, in 
Indian file, our knapsacks on our heads, and popped, those 
who had not been left on the way, into the cellars under 
the caretaker's house with an < Ouf ! ' of relief." (Georges 
Delaballe.) 



148 DIXMUDE 

their tether, especially their foot Chasseurs,* 
and we took their places in the trenches. 
We had three aviatiks continually hanging 
over us,f at which we fired in vain. They 
returned every day at the same hour, as 
surely as poverty to the world. As soon as 
they had gone back we knew what to ex- 
pect. Down came the marmites on our 
devoted heads ! " 

And their music, compared to the gentle 
coughing of our little Belgian guns ! At last a 
dozen new 75's appeared on the scene and 
relieved these poor asthmatics. They were 
distributed between Caeskerke and the Yser. 
Our grim point was the cemetery. There 
one of our trenches had been taken by the 

* It must be remembered that the Belgians had been 
fighting for three solid months, and that until the 23rd 
October they had faced the Germans alone, if not at Dix- 
mude at least as far north as Nieuport. 

t To say nothing of a captive balloon. " Violent 
bombardment of our trenches, directed by ' sausage ' 
balloons ; feeble reply of French and Belgian artillery," 
is the entry, under date of the 8th, in an officer's note- 
book, where also we find under date of the 9th : 
" Bombardment continued. Night attack on the outposts, 
which were driven in." 



THE DEATH OF DIXMUDE 149 

Germans, but a vigorous counter-attack, led 
by Second-Lieutenant Melchior, soon turned 
them out. " Exasperated by so many sterile 
efforts," writes Lieutenant A., " the enemy 
decided, on November 10, to make a decisive 
stroke. Towards ten in the morning began 
the most terrible bombardment the brigade 
had yet had to suffer. The fire was very 
accurate, destroying the trenches and causing 
great losses."* At n o'clock 12,000 Germans, 
Mausers at the charge, advanced against 
Dixmude.f 

This attack repeated the tactics of the early 
days of the siege. The Germans came on in 
heavy masses, reinforced by fresh troops. 

* Dr. Caradec says the German artillery, consisting of 
batteries of 105's and 77's, was posted 2,000 metres away, 
behind the Chateau of Woumen, and near Vladsloo, 
Korteckeer, and Kasterthoeck. 

t Before that, however, at half-past nine, a lively attack 
had been directed against the front of the ninth and tenth 
companies of the 1st Regiment, which occupied towards 
Beerst one end of the arc described round Dixmude by our 
trenches ; the extremities of this arc rested on the Yser. 
The Germans tried to push between the Yser and the flank 
of the ninth company. This attack was repulsed by the two 
companies, assisted by fire from the remaining trenches 
and_a battery of 75's. 



ISO DIXMUDE 

They had also learnt the weak points of their 
opponents. And yet it is not certain that the 
attack would have succeeded had it not 
been for the unexpected giving way of our 
positions on the Eessen road.* This was the 
only part of the southern sector not defended 
by Marines. It must have been entirely 
smashed up, with the Senegalese who flanked 
it on both wings. As a fact, the enemy's fire 
was so intense along the whole line and our 
reply so feeble, that Alfred de Nanteuil, who 
occupied a trench in rear of the northern 
sector, had to withdraw his men behind a 
haystack. " Impossible to lift one's nose 
above the ground," writes an officer, " so 
thick and fast came the shells." The attack- 
ing column was thus enabled to pass the canal 
at Handzaeme and to fall upon the flank of 
the trenches occupied by the eleventh company. 
This company had been engaging the batteries 
at Korteckeer and Kasterthoeck, on their left, 
and a violent rifle and machine-gun fire from 

* Rather above Dixmude station, between the railway 
embankment and the Eessen road. 




HOUSES ON THE HANDZAEME CANAL 



THE DEATH OF DIXMUDE 151 

a group of farms higher up the canal. What 
was left of it had barely time to fall back upon 
its neighbours, the ninth and tenth companies. 
A hostile detachment, creeping along the 
canal, had contrived to push as far as the com- 
mand post of the third battalion, taking pos- 
session on the way of Dr. Guillet's ambulance, 
which had been established at the end of the 
Roman bridge. Our trenches were not con- 
nected by telephone, and communications had 
broken down. Four Marines only, out of the 60 
in the reserve of Commander Rabot, succeeded 
in escaping. The sentry on the roof of the 
farm in which they were waiting saw the 
enemy coming and gave the alarm : " The 
Boches — quartei of a mile away ! " "To 
arms ! " shouted De Nanteuil. " Into the 
trenches ! " 

He himself went to an exposed point to 
observe the enemy. There a bullet hit him in 
the neck, striking the spinal marrow. How his 
men contrived to bring him off it is difficult to 
say. He remained conscious and had no illu- 
sions as to his state. All his energy seemed 



152 DIXMUDE 

concentrated on the desire to die in France. 
He had his wish.* 

Then came the final defeat. The lines on 
the Eessen road driven in, the dyke pierced 
at the centre, the northern sector cut off from 
the south, the German wave flowed over us. 
The enemy had penetrated to the heart of our 
defence, and, being continuously reinforced, 

* We find in the Bulletin de la Societe Archeologique du 
Finis ter re that " M. de Nanteuil, a retired naval officer, 
returned to the service in the first days of the war and was 
attached to the defence of Brest and its neighbourhood. 
But this occupation seemed to him too quiet, and, in spite 
of a precarious state of health, he left no stone unturned to get 
to the front. Fifteen days after arriving there he was killed, 
one hero more in a family of heroes. He was an efficient 
archaeologist, especially in all that had to do with military 
architecture. He had published some excellent papers on 
our old feudal castles in the Bulletins of the Association 
Bretonne, historical notes and descriptions relating to the 
Chateau of Brest, the remains at Morlaix and Saint Pol de 
Leon, the churches of Guimilian, Lampaul, Saint Thegonnec, 
and Pleyben. . . ." He went off full of pluck and go, we 
hear from another source, his heart full of eagerness to meet 
the enemy. Those friends who saw him off all noticed his 
radiant looks . . . When mortally wounded, for paralysis 
supervened almost at once, and carried to the ambulance, 
his head was still clear, he was anxious as to the phases of 
the battle, and asked whether the enemy had been repulsed. 
He supported his sufferings without complaint, and in the 
evening, although he was very weak, they moved him on to 
Malo-les-Bains, for he "wished to die on French ground." 



THE DEATH OF DIXMUDE 153 

swept round our flanks and took us in reverse. 
One after another our positions gave way. 
Already the first fugitives were arriving before 
Dixmude. 

" Where are you off to ? " cries an officer as 
he bars the way to a sailor. 

" Captain, a shell has smashed my rifle. 
Give me another, and I'll go back." 

They give him one, and he returns to the 
inferno. Another, wandering on the field like 
a soul in torture, replies to the inquiry of an 
officer that he is " looking for his company. 
There cannot be much of it left, but," 
straightening himself, " that does not matter : 
they shall not get through ! " * 

And they do not get through. But it was 
too late to stop them from entering Dixmude. 
Their musketry was all round us, a rifle behind 
every heap of rubble, a machine-gun at every 
point of vantage. The sharp note of the 
German trumpet sounded from every side. 
It is possible that a certain number of the 
enemy who had lain hidden in the cellars of 
* Dr. Caradec, op. cit. 



154 DIXMUDE 

Dixmude ever since the fighting on the 25 th 
now came out of their earth to add to the 
confusion. The truth of this will be known 
some day. We were under fire in the town, 
outside the town, on the canal, on the Yser. 
It was street fighting, with all its ambuscades 
and surprises. What had become of the 
covering troops in the cemetery and on the 
Beerst road ? Of the reserve under Com- 
mander Rabot, driven from ditch to ditch, 
its commander killed or missing,* only fifteen 
men were left. These were rallied by Lieu- 
tenant Serieyx in a muddy ditch, where they 
fought to the last man. Surrounded and 
disarmed, Serieyx and some others were 
forced to act as a shield to the Germans who 
were advancing against the junction of the 
canal and the Yser. " Abominable sight," 
says Lieutenant A., " French prisoners com- 
pelled to march in front of Boches, who 
knelt behind them and fired between their 



* He was killed. He had been hit by a bullet above 
the ear as he raised himself to glance round over the high 
bank of a watercourse lined by his men. 



THE DEATH OF DIXMUDE 155 

legs ! " Our men beyond the Yser could not 
reply. 

" Call to them to surrender," ordered the 
German major to Serieyx. 

" Why should you think they will surrender ? 
There are ten thousand of them ! " * 

There were really two hundred ! 

At this moment a sudden burst of fire on 
the right distracted the enemy's attention. 
With a sign to the others, Serieyx, whose arm 
had already been broken by a bullet, threw 
himself into the Yser, succeeded in swimming 
across, and at once made his way to the 
Admiral to report what was happening. 

* To this major Serieyx had only surrendered after all 
his ammunition was exhausted, and he and his men saw that no 
further resistance was possible. The major had then asked 
Serieyx whether there was no means of crossing the Yser. 
Serieyx answered, " I only know of one, the Haut Pont." 
Now, at some fifty yards from where they stood, there was 
a footbridge which our sailors were at that moment crossing. 
Serieyx held the major's attention by taking a pencil and 
tracing a complicated plan of the position. From time to 
time firing took place, and the Frenchmen planted them- 
selves stoically in front of the Boches, Serieyx working 
away at his plan. But the major grew impatient at its 
complication, and thought it better to make use of his 
prisoner to procure the surrender of the trenches. 



156 DIXMUDE 

A counter-attack ordered by the officer in 
command of the defence and led by Lieutenant 
d'Albia had covered his escape. The eighth 
company, in reserve, reinforced by a section 
of the fifth company of the 2nd Regiment, 
under Commander Mauros and Lieutenant 
Daniel, entrenched itself behind the barricade 
at the level crossing on the Eessen road.* 
On all the roads leading to the Yser, and 
especially at the three bridges, sections 
strongly established themselves or helped to 
consolidate sections already there. Would 
these dispositions, hastily taken by Com- 
mandant Delage, be enough to save Dixmude ? 
At most they could only prolong the agony. 
Her hours were numbered. After having 
driven its way through the hostile column 
which had reached the Yser, Lieutenant 
d'Albia's section encountered more Germans 
debouching from the Grand' Place and 
neighbouring streets. Germans and French- 

" The troops in the southern sector moved back towards 
the town, defending themselves by a series of barricades, 
under the orders of Commander Mauros and Lieutenant 
Daniel." (Note-book of Second-Lieutenant X.) 



THE DEATH OF DIXMUDE 157 

men now formed nothing but a mass of 
shouting men. They shot each other at close 
quarters ; they fought with their bayonets, 
their knives, their clubbed rifles, and when 
these were broken, with their fists, with their 
feet, even with their teeth. By three in the 
afternoon we had lost one half of our men, 
killed, wounded, or prisoners. The German 
columns were still pouring into Dixmude 
through the breaches in the defence. They 
pushed us back to the bridges, which we still 
held, which we were indeed to hold to the end. 
They were going to take Dixmude, but the little 
sailor was right : they were not going to pass 
the Yser. One more attack was organised to 
bring off the Mauros company, which was 
retiring under a terrible fire. The remains of 
several sections were brought together, and, 
led by their officers, they charged into the 
melee in the streets. One purple-faced, 
sweating Marine, who had seen his brother 
fall, swore he would have the blood of twenty 
Boches. He went for them with the bayonet, 
counting " One ! two ! three ! " etc., till he 



158 DIXMUDE 

had reached twenty-two. After that he re- 
turned to his company, a madman. 

But what could the finest heroism do against 
the swarms of men who rose, as it were, from 
the earth as fast as they were crushed ? 
" They are like bugs," sighed a quarter- 
master, and night was coming on. Dixmude 
had ceased to give signs of life. For six 
hours fighting had gone on over a dismembered 
corpse. Not a gable, not a wall, was left 
standing, except those of the flour factory. To 
hold these heaps of rubbish, which might turn 
into a focus of infection, was not worth the 
little finger of one of our men. At 5 o'clock 
in the evening, after blowing up the bridges 
and the flour factory, the Admiral retired 
behind the Yser.* 

* It has been said that an old woman caused the fall of 
Dixmude on November 10. "The allied forces occupy- 
ing Dixmude," said the Daily Mail, " consisted of a 
squadron of cavalry encamped on the right bank of the Yser, 
two batteries of 75's, a regiment of infantry, and a battalion 
of Zouaves (!). The battle began with a violent cannonade, 
which had the great distillery in the centre of the town as 
its principal objective. Two of our 75's were on the first 
floor of a tannery, the others below, on a little mound 
where skins were cleaned. Our artillery was able to hold 



THE DEATH OF DIXMUDE 159 

" Dear mother," wrote a Marine a few days 
later from Audierne, " I have to tell you 
that on the 10th of this month I was not 
cheering much at Dixmude, for out of the 

the enemy in check, opening great breaches through the 
hostile ranks with its shells. One German gun lost all its 
team, and the Uhlans were mown down by our sailors. Our 
men, cavalry and infantry, were awaiting the word to attack. 
Just at this moment appeared an old woman to whom our 
Zouaves had been kind, as she seemed so miserable. She 
had marched with them, leaning on the arm of one and 
another and sharing their soup. She mounted to the first 
floor of the tannery, and then disappeared. A moment 
later a light appeared on the roof of the distillery. It was 
seen to swing three times from right to left. Five minutes 
later the German shells began to rain upon the point 
indicated by the light. In a very short time the building 
was greatly damaged, fires broke out, and the burning 
alcohol lighted up the whole neighbourhood. Unable to 
stem either the deluge of shells or this conflagration, the 
French general decided to evacuate the town and entrench 
himself on the canal banks. With great difficulty the 75's 
were withdrawn from their positions. Before quitting the 
city the French soldiers saw, and were able to identify, the 
' old woman,' stretched on the ground, with the uniform of 
an Uhlan peeping from beneath ' her ' skirts." This is all 
pure imagination. Spies certainly played a part in the fall 
of Dixmude. Too ' many people were accepted as refugees 
and distressed inhabitants who were in reality the guides 
and accomplices of the enemy. But, in the first place, we 
had no Zouaves at Dixmude ; secondly, our observation post 
was not in a tannery ; finally, we had no cavalry. The 
only body which barred the way to the Germans was the 
Marines, omitted in this account. 



160 DIXMUDE 

whole of my company only 30 returned. I 
never expected to come out, but with a stout 
heart I managed to get away. I had a very 
bad time. Many of us had to swim to save 
ourselves." These, no doubt, were the 
prisoners who had thrown themselves into 
the canal with the heroic Serieyx. 

All this time Lieutenant Cantener, who 
had taken command on the death of his 
senior officer, had been maintaining himself 
on the Beerst road, with three companies of 
Marines. At nightfall he had the satisfaction 
— and the credit — of bringing nearly the 
whole of his command safely into our lines. 
They had made their way by ditches full of 
water and mud up to their waists. They were 
450 in all — 450 blocks of mud — and they were 
not, as has been said, worn out and without 
arms and equipment, but steadily marching in 
fours, bayonets fixed, and as calm as on parade. 
They had their wounded in front, and each 
company had its rear-guard.* 

* The following details of this fine operation have reached 
me, but before giving them I must remind the reader that 



THE DEATH OF DIXMUDE 161 

Too many of our men were left beneath 
the ruins of the town or in the hands of the 

the Germans who fell upon the reserve under Commander 
Rabot did not destroy Company 1 1 . This company, after 
a lively exchange of fire, retired upon Companies 9 and 10, 
which were almost intact. Dixmude had already fallen, 
when the captains of the three companies met, and after 
thinking over the situation, determined to hold on at all 
costs. Consequently "Company 10 proceeded to place a 
small advanced post on the Beerst road, with two double 
sentries, and a rear-guard at the old mill. The company 
itself was drawn up with one rank facing to the front, the 
other to the rear, and the trenches so arranged that a front 
could be shown in any direction. The machine-guns 
abandoned by the Belgians were overhauled and placed so 
as to sweep the Beerst road. At 6.30 the little northern 
post was attacked. Pursuant to orders, it retired after a 
volley or two. Then fire opened along the whole line, the 
machine-guns of Company 10 joining in. The Germans, 
who expected no such stubborn resistance, had severe losses. 
For an hour the fight lasted without change, the men still 
at their post and the trench still intact. All the killed, 
Captain Baudry among them, were shot through the head, 
the wounded, in the head or the arm, in the act of firing. 
At this moment the beginning of an attack from the rear made 
itself felt. The time for retreat had come, as the detachment 
had lost connection with the Staff of the battalion. The 
companies moved off successively, each leaving a section to 
protect its retreat. This retreat was admirable, but quite in- 
describable on account of the ground. Arroyos (mud-holes) 
everywhere. The men got through, although sinking to their 
armpits and handing on their wounded before them. After 
two hours of this painful but orderly progression, they arrived 
before the footbridge over the Yser. A farm granary arose 
near by, where the Germans had mounted machine-guns to 



1 62 DIXMUDE 

enemy, but they had not been vainly sacri- 
ficed.* After losing some 10,000 men,f the 
Germans found themselves in possession of a 
town reduced to mere heaps of rubbish with 
an impregnable line beyond. Our reserve 
lines had become our front, well furnished with 
heavy guns, and punctually supported by the 
inundation which stretched its impassable 



sweep the bridge. Lieutenant Cantener, who was now in 
command, decided to carry the farm. The operation was a 
complete success. The Germans were driven out, the farm 
burnt, and the Yser crossed. The column, with its wounded 
in front, then made its way safely to the cross-roads at 
Caeskerke, and thence into the shelter trenches at Oude- 
cappelle." The third battalion of the 1st Regiment, which 
held the northern sector, had the following officers : Company 
9, Berat, Poisson, Le Gall; Company 10, Baudry, Mazen, 
Devisse; Company II, Cantener, Hillairet, Le Provost; 
Company 12, De Nanteuil, Vielhomme, Charrier. 

* According to M. Pierre Loti, the Marines at Dix- 
mude lost "half their effective and from 80 to 100 of their 
officers." This estimate is none too large if we include the 
wounded and missing. 

t According to the Nieuzvs van den Dag, 4,000 wounded 
were sent to Liege the next day. Another Dutch journal, 
the Telegraaf, says that out of 3,000 men engaged in the 
attack on the southern sector of the defence " only a hundred 
men were left after the fall of the town." All estimates 
are clearly uncertain in such confused affairs, and so we 
have taken our figures preferably from the neutral press, 
in which we may look for a certain amount of impartiality. 



THE DEATH OF DIXMUDE 163 

defence both, to north and south. The whole 
valley of the Lower Yser had become a tideless 
sea, out into which stood Dixmude, like a 
crumbling headland. In taking it the Ger- 
mans had simply made themselves masters of 
two tetes de pont. Even that is saying too 
much, for we still commanded the place from 
the northern bank of the Yser, and our 
artillery, under General Coffee, frustrated all 
attempts to organise their capture. Mean- 
while thousands of Germans, between the 
Yser and the embankment of the Nieuport 
railway, watched with apprehension the water 
rising about the mounds up which they had 
hauled their mortars and machine-guns. In 
the immediate neighbourhood of Dixmude, 
where the Admiral had caused the sluice at 
the sixteenth milestone to be blown up,* a 

* The operation was carried out by Quartermaster Le 
Belle, to whom the military medal was awarded. " A night 
or two ago," writes Commander Geynet, " I was ordered to 
blow up the sluice in front of me. ... A little quartermaster 
crossed the stream on a plank nailed across two barrels. We 
pushed the Prussians out of the way by rifle fire. My 
little man, with his charge of dynamite, chose his moment 
well, then, leaving his raft to draw the fire of the Prussians, 
regained our bank by swimming." 



1 64 DIXMUDE 

hostile column of some fifteen hundred men 
was overwhelmed by the water together with 
the patch of raised ground on which it had 
taken refuge.* A fresh inundation added 
greatly to the extent of the floods, and 
practically reconstituted the old schoore of 
Dixmude. All danger of the enemy's making 
good the passage of the river had finally 
passed away. 

* Paul Chautard in the Liberte of November 24. 
Commander Geynet says nothing of this episode, however. 



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R D - 6 6. 




Plan of Attack 

on DIXMUDE 

on November 10- 

1914. 



500 lOOOw. 



BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO. LD. , PRINTERS, 
LONDON AND TONBRIDGE. 



MAP of OPERATIONS 
Round DIXMUDE 
Drawn by CH.LEGOFFIC. 




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